Brand vs. Performance: Breaking Down the Silos With Tiffany Wilburn

Tiffany Wilburn is the Fractional CMO at Clever Disruption, where she helps food and beverage brands, agencies, and tech companies scale. She is also a Business Mentor and Coach at The DEC Network, which pairs entrepreneurs with business veterans who can identify emerging opportunities. With over two decades of global marketing leadership, Tiffany has transformed CPG and hospitality businesses through her expertise in brand management and strategy, product innovation, retail merchandising, and consumer insights.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:11] How Tiffany Wilburn repositioned an iconic brand for new generations of consumers
[10:21] Tiffany’s approach to renovating the Fresh Direct brand through new-to-world product launches
[20:03] The ethnographic research process for bespoke marketing initiatives
[24:10] Shifting from growth to sales optimization: the TGI Fridays story
[31:55] How to balance the marketing flywheel for the consumer
[39:57] Strategies for diversifying performance marketing investments for higher ROI
[43:19] How can brands identify optimal positioning in a crowded market?
[54:21] Dismantling silos between brand and performance marketing
[58:22] Tiffany shares her philosophy on presence and non-attachment in business
[1:07:42] Advice for black women in the corporate world: be authentic

In this episode…

In a crowded market overflowing with identical products, brands must tailor their product marketing strategies to various consumer demographics. Some of the world’s most iconic brands have fully repositioned themselves while maintaining customer loyalty. What can e-commerce brands learn from their efforts?

CPG brand marketer Tiffany Wilburn has driven revolutionary brand repositioning and product launch strategies for renowned companies like TGI Fridays, Fresh Direct, and Southern Comfort. These approaches included refining marketing messages for new consumer demographics, launching unparalleled bespoke products, and optimizing operations for sale. Tiffany emphasizes conducting ethnographic research to observe consumer behavior for insights into purchasing decisions, enhancing targeting and marketing efforts. You should also allocate funds across both brand and performance marketing to foster a lifelong relationship with consumers.

In this week’s episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris chats with Tiffany Wilburn, Fractional CMO at Clever Disruption, about creatively disrupting and elevating brands for the modern consumer. Tiffany shares how to balance the marketing flywheel, how she identifies optimal positioning in a crowded market, and her advice and philosophies on presence and non-attachment.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"If we're not growing, we're slowly dying."
"Don't be afraid to get creative."
"The spotlight is not always on you."
"Liquid death is a brand for people who fill in the blank."
"Songbirds only sing when they're not in a state of stress."

Action Steps

Reevaluate brand positioning: Assess your brand through the lens of distinction and differentiation to stand out amid competition. This encourages brands to hone in on their unique selling propositions, which is essential to cut through the market noise.
Engage in ethnographic research: Observe consumer behavior in their natural settings for deeper insights. This reveals the subconscious consumer behavior that drives purchase decisions, leading to more effective marketing strategies.
Invest in brand marketing alongside performance marketing: Allocate funds to both to create a stronger consumer-brand relationship. This balances short-term sales targets with long-term brand equity to maximize return on marketing investment.
Embrace authenticity: Encourage open discussions about individuality within your organization. Promoting authenticity leads to a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and innovation.
Cultivate non-attachment: Focus on the present and detach from specific outcomes to make more strategic decisions. By reducing the fear of failure, you invite growth, creativity, and resilience in leadership and business development.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:00

Music. Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:15

Hey everyone. I'm William Harris, the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond as you up aerial your business and your personal life. Really excited about the guests that I have today. Tiffany Wilburn, after two decades of leading global food and beverage marketing in roles such as CMO, SVP marketing, VP of Marketing and global brand director with brands like Nestle, Sazerac and TGI Fridays. Tiffany Wilburn founded Clever Disruption, based in Dallas. Clever Disruption is an executive marketing firm dedicated to helping food and beverage brands as well as agencies and SaaS businesses selling to FMB brands capture attention, build strong connections and increase conversion to boost both their top and bottom lines, if you're a food or beverage brand agency or SaaS business selling the food or beverage businesses, reach out to Tiffany. Tiffany, I'm really excited to have you here today.

Tiffany Wilburn 1:10

Excited to be here, William, thanks for inviting me. Yeah,

William Harris 1:14

well, and I have to give a special thank you to Ted. Rubin, Best Selling Author, keynote speaker, for making this introduction to us. So thank you, Ted. Thank you. I want to get into some of the good stuff. We're going to be talking about brand versus performance and breaking on the silos. Before we do, I have to give our sponsor message here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that i pod recently. You can learn more on our website@elumynt.com which is spelled Elumynt.com that said, onto the good stuff. I want to talk about some of the work that you've done. You've got a couple of really good case studies about how you've been able to, you know, Clever Disruption, disrupt things in a clever way. The one that comes to mind first was Southern Comfort. Tell me what was going on with Southern Comfort and how you were able to help them.

Tiffany Wilburn 2:11

Yeah, so Southern Comfort was, or is, an iconic American brand. It's been around for about 150 years. Through that that lineage, we'll call it, the brand, has evolved quite a bit. It started as a high class premium brand, and over the course of the century that it's been around has really found it found its footing more in the bar, nightlife, youthful scene. When the business was bought by Sazerac from Brown and brown Foreman back in 2015 I believe it, it really kind of was a dusty brand on the shelf. It had a very, very stable, loyal consumer, but there hadn't been a influx of new consumers into the business in quite a while, and so the challenge was, how do we elevate this brand back to its heritage status and bring new consumers into the business? That's

William Harris 3:15

the thing that a lot of legacy brands struggle with, is, is that bringing new in life back into things, right? So what, what did you do that helped bring new life into this?

Tiffany Wilburn 3:28

Yeah, so it was a three prong approach. The first was repositioning the brand. At the time, the brand was very much positioned and targeted towards the first time drinker, the 21 to 24 year old. So it was a very sweet, very palatable product. The opportunity that we saw was to elevate the business or elevate the brand with a slightly more mature, inexperienced drinker, which would have been like the 25 to 29 year old, which would allow us to put more more whiskey in the product and create a liquid profile that better aligned with the whiskey category versus the liqueur category. So repositioning the brand was the first thing we did. The second was all around that product innovation. So the heritage product is the 60 proof, the red bottle, if you will. That everyone really knows there was an opportunity with that whiskey elevation to introduce product innovation. So we introduced a product called Southern Comfort black, which was a 70 proof. It had a higher percentage of whiskey in the product, and the profile was less sweet and more smoky, much more similar to like a Jack Daniels or something that a consumers would a consumer that had experience in the whiskey category would expect. And then the third thing we did was a creative consumer campaign. So we pulled the brand out of the bar and put the brand on. At the front stage being the outdoor environment. And it really wasn't SERENDIP serendipitous time, because it was during covid, and people were really, you know, itching to get out of their home. And so bringing the brand out of the bar and bringing it outdoors with the campaign, get comfortable outdoors, it allowed us to present the product in a totally different occasion you set than consumers were previously thinking about it.

William Harris 5:28

I love this, and these are some bold repositionings that are taking place here. I feel like with legacy brands, one thing that can be scary is repositioning in a way that doesn't alienate your core audience too. How did you how did you navigate that? How did you make sure that you know the rest of the stakeholders were on board with making this new brand position statement in a way that wasn't going to alienate everybody?

Tiffany Wilburn 5:57

Yeah, I think, honestly, having a differentiated product helps a lot, because, yes, we were repositioning the brand in total, but the 60 proof was still very much available and accessible to the base consumer who really was a die hard 60 proof consumer. I do think that having a differentiated product strategy that complements a repositioning helped us in that instance. Yeah,

William Harris 6:28

no, that makes a lot of sense. You know, last week's episode was with Tyson Drake, and he talked a lot about, from his perspective, you know, these three different things that you can look at when you're trying to grow and expand. And one of those as new markets, you know, new audiences, things like that, and new products and and I think that to your point, if you can, if you can combine all three of them, then you're in the best bet, because, you know, you're combining new product with the the new audience that you want, versus just going to try to capture a new audience with the current product, which, which can be done well, I'd say Stanley mugs has done that well, but It's harder to do without actually coming out with something significantly different from what you currently have,

Tiffany Wilburn 7:07

right? Yeah, I love that. Use the Stanley example, because in my mind, it is a different product. It sure. Product flipped upside down, but they presented it in a relevant way to the new consumer, because if you think about the usage of the Stanley, the original Stanley, it was utilitarian for that previous core consumer, the blue collar male worker, but when they flipped it upside down, they presented entire entirely different utilitarian usage for The now female consumer that they're targeting and their color strategy has been very, very inspiring to just witness, because it leans into, truthfully, the personalization trend that is over 15 years old, but still, this demonstrates that is extremely relevant today.

William Harris 7:59

Totally, yeah. And I think we remember, we go through these, these moments where personalization is, is the hallmark of a brand, and then it goes away, and then it comes back. And I feel like this is one that they're they're riding the wave right now for them, which is great. You'll see other brands that do go with personalization then and then get away from that. The example I'm thinking of would be the iPhone, which a lot of times it's like, you got, like, you know, a couple options of colors, and that's it. There's not a whole lot of personalization that could take place there. So I'm curious, though, when you guys decided to make this reposition coupled with, okay, so you're going after this new audience with this new positioning statement and this new product, which came first? Did you identify the new audience that you wanted to target with this new positioning and then create a product around that? Or was it more like, hey, we have this product in development? Who is this product good for

Tiffany Wilburn 8:55

the former, I would never recommend creating a product and then trying to find a consumer to sell it to, because that's a much more difficult task. It was really looking at the opportunity landscape and figuring out, well, where is the market shifting? I think in the spirits industry right now, we see a lot of market opportunity with non out. But when this project was in, set the inception of this project, we saw a lot of opportunity actually in the whiskey category, and if you recall I mentioned the 60 proof, it tends to be more aligned with and even merchandised in some instances, in the liqueur category. So it was a strategic shift to get the brand out of the liqueur category and into the whiskey section, which had a much higher foot traffic from a weekly perspective, but it also had a higher AOV or average order value. Very

William Harris 9:51

smart. Very smart. I like that. Okay. The other one that caught my attention here was so that one we call I think we. You and I, when we were talking about this before, there's like, two two types. There's the brand renovation, and that's where Southern Comfort was, and then there's the new to world, right? Where this is a phrase that you use, so this is not my phrase, but I like this new to world, where it's like, you're, you're coming up with something that hasn't been around before, and this was Fresh Direct. Tell me what happened with Fresh Direct and how you were able to bring them to market. Yeah.

Tiffany Wilburn 10:21

So Fresh Direct was, and still is, a premium online grocer that primarily operates in New York City and the surrounding boroughs and suburbs. Their desire at the time was to drive profitability for the company, because they had been in existence for several years, they were competing against Whole Foods fairway market. Stuart Leonard is the retailer, I believe, as well, and what they were finding is consumers were coming to them because they appreciated their premium assortment, but they really had an opportunity to drive profitability as well. So because of the model being direct to consumer, there's no brick and mortar. They had higher operating model costs than just a regular brick and mortar grocery store that also sold premium products. So the opportunity was to come in and introduce a private brand program that would one even more so further differentiate their assortment from the whole foods and fairway markets of the their their trade area, but also drive profitability. And so what we started with was what I mentioned earlier, a true landscape analysis. What are the market opportunities that we see in our trade area, and I like to refer to that as our playing field. What are the market opportunities in our trade area? Who are the consumers that we think we have a viable opportunity of attracting and gaining consideration and then converting? What are those consumers seeking and so with that as our foundation, we created a multi category, private brand solution that drove profitability, that increased their distinctiveness, because it was only available at Fresh Direct but it also delivered on their promise to their Consumer from a brand, a corporate brand, perspective of delivering premium, premium assort assorted items. So that program, you know, it entailed creating new paper, a new paper brand. So yes, everybody wants premium, but maybe you need to take a cut on the corner for your paper towel that you're purchasing as an example. It involved creating a new olive oil program. We created the first ever pull it egg program, do you know what a pull it egg is?

William Harris 12:52

I have no clue.

Tiffany Wilburn 12:54

No. Okay, so this is where storytelling and marketing come into to play hand in hand. So we were at the we were at a facility tour, and one of the things that we noticed was when the eggs were being sorted, and this happens in all industries, when the eggs were traditionally being sorted, there's almost like a sifter that the eggs are going across. So the medium eggs are going down the SIFT, that size for the mediums, and the large are going down the SIFT that size for the large, well, there were these teeny weeny little eggs, just the teeniest, tiny little eggs, and they were just falling off and going into another area, completely diverted from the retail program eggs. And when we asked the question to the farmer, you know, well, what are where are those teeny eggs going? What are those? They informed us that those are the hens very first laid eggs. And the very first laid eggs tend to be smaller, and they refer to them as a pullet egg. And some folks now have branded that as the farmer's egg, because what farmers were doing is taking those teeny, tiny eggs to the farmers market and selling them themselves directly, versus putting those tiny eggs in the retail program. If you think about it, you tend to see medium and large and extra large in the retail program. Well, the beauty about that farmer's egg, or the pullet egg, is because it's the first laid egg that the hen produces, it is richer. The yolk stands up more prominently. It has a deep, deep orange hue to it, and the taste profile. It almost like it some and some chef will say, I don't know about that, but I do think it really compares to what you would expect to experience from like a quail egg. And so there was so much differentiation in that tiny egg, that little pullet egg, that we said, We want all your tiny eggs. Well, take them, and we created an entire program around those pullet eggs.

William Harris 14:55

So I think this is interesting. First of all, I should have known. What a pull of egg is. We have chickens. And when I say we have chickens, I mean, my wife has chickens like I know them. And in fact, I brought one of them on an episode one time, just for being silly or whatever, and had a chicken, you know, sitting here like it was, like The Godfather. But I think you basically took what was almost considered a waste product and turned it into a premium product. Exactly. Brilliant.

Tiffany Wilburn 15:24

And did the appropriate storytelling around why it's a premium product. It actually the benefits are there. It wasn't like we were making anything up, but the market just didn't know. So it was really a more around, like shining light on what is already in existence and how you can utilize this, and how it really is a premium eating experience compared to just a normal air quote, normal medium sized egg.

William Harris 15:51

Yeah. So it sounds like this was a very successful endeavor for being able to do this for fresh, fresh direct. Is there anything you could point to within all of these options that was better than the others, where you're like, okay, great, we've got the eggs, we've got, you know, paper towels, a lot of different potential options. Is there one that stands out? And maybe it is the eggs as like, this was the one that really ended up becoming the biggest success in that

Tiffany Wilburn 16:19

in that program in particular, I would, I would venture to say, Ooh, I would vacillate between either the milk program that we put together. So the milk, why that is, is milk is seen as a commodity, but consumers very often look at the milk price on the front page and decide where they're going to shop based on the price of those commodity items. You know, it's in all in a lot of retailers a strategy those items are considered loss leaders, so they'll sell it at cost, and know that they're going to make their margin on other items in the the store that the consumer will buy. So milk, eggs, in most instances, bread and sometimes even a produce or a protein can be considered a loss leader. But our milk program, I think, was so successful and it's still around today, because it really, really leveraged the unique production process of the small farmers that were at the time in upstate New York. It was at a time, this was probably 10 years ago, when there were not as many consumers that were leaning into organic or leaning into grass fed, etc, so that was very much at the cusp of that conversation from a mass retailer perspective. So not niche. Okay, there were a couple brands that were talking about it at farmer's markets, et cetera, but this is one of the first programs that really started to operationalize on a larger commercial stage, that type of a benefit in program. So I would say the milk program for that reason. The other would be the olive oil program. It's still around today. There's a lot of innovation, really cool innovation in the olive oil category. Recently, I think graza was one of the brands that started to innovate in the category, really more so with packaging, they've done some single source sourcing of their olive oil versus blending. And that's another example of a premium cue our olive oil program was that 10 years ago. So I think both of those would be, in my personal opinion, too, of the programs that were most successful, because those categories can be seen as a commodity. You talk about olive oil in New York City, but we really found a way to story tell around how that product was a premium item in comparison to its other peers.

William Harris 19:02

I love the storytelling piece, and I want to come back to that. Something you mentioned, though, with packaging that I appreciated a couple weeks ago, we had will leach on, and he was ex Pepsi and wrote a book marketing to mind states. But at the time, he talks about one of the stories about the new packaging they did for Sun Chips. And then everybody wanted, like, this biodegradable bag. I

Tiffany Wilburn 19:27

remember that.

William Harris 19:28

Okay, so you know where I'm going with right? And they, they got this bag, and he was like, This is no good before it actually hit the shelves. I mean, it was the loudest bag that they could have ever heard, and people touched it and didn't want anything to do with it, and so, like, there's an element of product research maybe that needs to go into all of these different initiatives that you're talking about, from Southern Comfort to Fresh Direct. How do you know when you found a way or what, like, what type of research are you doing to say, Yeah, this is the thing that's going to work for versus getting it on the. Selves and saying, I don't we miss that. Up, yeah. Hands

Tiffany Wilburn 20:03

down. I have experienced this time and time again. Hands down, my golden go to research methodology is ethnographic research. I want to be in your home. I want to mirror you as you are going through your normal daily routine, because there's things that we say and there's things that we do. You know, I say I eat salad every night, but I actually also go back at nine o'clock and get a handful of chocolate covered almonds. I just forget that part. So there's just, and it's not that consumers are deceptive, but they just don't realize some of the muscle memory that their habits have formed. And so I love ethnographic research. So shop alongs are one of the ways that we've, you know, commercialized that in the CPG industry, going with your shopper, seeing how she interacts at the shelf. What is she looking at, going with your consumer in their home and show me what's in your freezer. You say that you cook the product this way, but show me how you actually cook it, demonstrate it. So I believe that's the best method. And by best, I mean it's the purest, because it takes away the conscious mind and it allows you, as a marketer, to truly understand that subconscious consumer behavior.

William Harris 21:33

I love that. It reminds me, let's go into the e-commerce side of this. I know we're talking CPG, but you know, a lot of these things can be taking place online, and that's more my core. And I like what's called lateral thinking, where we're bringing things from one area and we're understanding how that applies to another area. And there's a website that I've always appreciated in the online space called the user is my mom, where he would basically have his mom review websites. And so you want to know if your website's any good. Have this guy's mom review it, and she's, you know, going through and it's like, I don't know what to do with this. Where do I go with this? How do I click on this? Why doesn't this do this thing? And it's genius, because, to your point, it's like, well, how is your actual user discovering your website, using your website, finding the products, if you have a discount, if you don't have a discount, spinning the wheel, is it actually beneficial to them? Because they just got, like, the third pop at Borough, and it's like, I actually want to buy this product, but now I'm leaving this journey. Yeah, and so I think, to your point, you know, just coming along, your shopper through that process, and being a part of what they're doing is, is is it's a very important in every way that you're going to be selling products to people, whether it's in the grocery stores or it's online. Yeah.

Tiffany Wilburn 22:49

And what you just talked about, we refer to in the industry, in the marketing industry, is the consumer journey. Because there's many parts along that consumer journey that can push your consumer into a consideration mindset and then a conversion mindset, or a I don't I'm I am irritated, or I'm frustrated, or now I don't think that they have what they that I need, because I haven't been able To find it quick enough so that UX UI component. We tend to talk about it mostly with digital marketing, but 100% is the same case with physical, brick and mortar marketing. I talk a lot with my clients about shelf ready display packaging. It's not just the actual product package that matters, but it's that shelf ready display. It's how are you creating a frictionless experience with your consumer throughout the journey?

William Harris 23:47

Yeah, I like that a lot. I want to look at there was a I like talking about successes. I also like talking about pivots. And there was a pivot that we had talked about with TGI Fridays. You're the interim cmo there. And there was initial business ask that ended up kind of having to get changed a little bit. What was this initial business ask, and what did it turn into? And how did you navigate that? Yeah,

Tiffany Wilburn 24:10

so you know, another iconic American brand. I've worked on a lot of iconic American brands.

William Harris 24:16

You have defined my my youth here, right? This is, like all you

Tiffany Wilburn 24:20

can even talk about hot pockets. We can go there, nice. So the original scope of the work to be done with TGI Fridays was to reposition the brand for growth. And, you know, the brand had been around for 60 years. It's a global brand. It is very much iconic. It really had its renaissance in the late 80s and early 90s, with suburban sprawl and latchkey lifestyles that started to become more prevalent in American culture. So the brand really has always. Stood for making every day feel like it's Friday, but it really had lost a little bit of that distinctiveness since the 90s with the influx of a lot of new fast casual dining brands and other innovations that really just put the business on its head. So the original charge was to reposition the brand for growth. We found out earlier. Well, I'll call it, you know, four to five months in that the need then became optimized to sell. And that happens a lot in businesses. You know, you get to a point in business where the opportunity costs potentially don't outweigh the investments that are required to reposition a business for growth. I think that's one thing that I have over my 20 years experience, is people don't understand how much it costs and how long it can take to build a successful business and brand, but it can come down in the matter in a matter of seconds, you know, with a consumer changing behavior or one viral tweet gone wrong. So that was the change we were going forward with, repositioning for growth, and then it became optimized to sell. Yeah,

William Harris 26:23

and there is a different tactic. So I know when we bring clients on, we go through all of these questions with them, because we're running ads right. And in order to run ads in the way that it's gonna be best for the business, there's a different approach that we're gonna take. If you're optimizing to sell versus optimizing to grow, you might be looking at a significantly different LTV to CAC ratio. If you're wanting to grow, you're willing to be aggressive, and you're willing to have several months before you can break even, whereas, even though becomes a much bigger focus point if you're looking to sell. And so yes, I fully respect that and how that needs to play out into all areas of of marketing, what? Um, what had to change when you, when you guys, made that shift? What are, you know, aside from advertising, things, what other things had to change within the business when you're looking at shifting from optimized to grow versus optimized for set to sell?

Tiffany Wilburn 27:20

Yeah, well, I think the first, the first one of the first changes that we had to make was our creative strategy. You were talking about the paid media strategy, but the creative strategy also needed to change where we were previously talking about a lot of brand campaigns, so talking about our brand equity and that Friday feeling and really trying to, over time, repetitively, create a concrete mental association with our consumers and the occasions that we wanted to go after that was the previous approach then going to optimize to sell. To your point, it was about EBITDA. So it's about, okay, we need traffic to come in, and we need it to be at a certain profitable threshold so that we are showing EBITDA, EBITDA growth.

William Harris 28:15

As long as you don't get rid of my brownie obsession, we're good. That was my number one trick there. Oh, man, I loved it.

Tiffany Wilburn 28:21

Yeah, I don't think that one's going anywhere anytime soon, because a lot of people like it good.

William Harris 28:27

So you know, what other metrics become more important when you're looking to sell a company of that size, EBITDA being a big part of that. But what other things are you looking to do, even from the creative standpoint, if it's less about that that you're trying to cause to happen,

Tiffany Wilburn 28:48

a lot more focused on performance marketing versus brand marketing. So I know you mentioned that earlier on, but that's one of the key differences. And performance marketing tends to be more focused on the conversion the lower part of a traditional funnel and brand marketing tends to be more long term mental association in the hearts and minds of your consumers. And so a lot of the things that we needed to do once the business needs shifted to optimize to sell, we're very focused on conversion, which, if we go one layer higher, is traffic. You need to get people in the funnel and move them through the funnel even faster than if we were talking about a brand marketing challenge.

William Harris 29:35

Yeah, we, as I mentioned in the beginning here, we've helped a lot of businesses sell, and one of the things that we look at is the story that the data tells too. And so you're talking about storytelling, and I like this, and there's storytelling for brand. There's also just the storytelling of the brand to the potential buyer, right? So now you're looking at the buyer instead of, maybe necessarily, the consumer. Were there things that you did? To help tell the best story to that buyer. Yeah, so

Tiffany Wilburn 30:04

we did continue on with some of the necessary brand equity work. And so I I work with brand pyramids very much in my profession. And so a brand pyramid is a strategic document that lays out a lot of key things that are going to influence your creative strategy, your product strategy and merchandising strategy. So we still needed to do that work in order to support the new business owner, so that that work didn't change.

William Harris 30:37

Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense, and that's good. I think there's just that idea of being able to show that the business is doing what it needs to do to the consumer as well, right, right?

Tiffany Wilburn 30:48

And what and what the business truly stands for in the hearts and minds of consumers. And you know what? Another thing I would say is the consumer work. We started the consumer work knowing that we would need that as an input to brand marketing campaigns, but we still needed the consumer work to demonstrate the market viability for the concept, because essentially, we're sizing the market opportunity. So if we're going to go after William, and William as a cohort or consumer persona, equals 100 million, and Tiffany as a consumer persona equals 200 million. Look at this. Look at that. By targeting the Williams and Tiffany's of the world, you have a $300 million business.

William Harris 31:31

Yeah. No, that's brilliant. I like that. I want to dig into some of the tactics and practical things that you worked on. One of the things that we were talking about for you is you talk about balancing the flywheel, which I really appreciate, this concept that this flywheel versus the funnel tell me what you mean when you talk about balancing the flywheel. Yes,

Tiffany Wilburn 31:55

so the marketing funnel, or the awareness funnel, is what a lot of marketers traditionally use, because it's a traditional model to visualize the stages of how the consumer is moving through their the experience with your business. So they're starting at awareness they in some some of the exact terminologies will differ, but for avoidance of doubt, I'll use my own terminology that I've always subscribed to. So they start at awareness, and then they show some sort of interest in the brand or proposition that they've become aware of. Then they move into consideration. So maybe they're doing a little bit more research. Maybe you see them coming and going on multiple owned channels that you have because you've dropped that pixel. So you know that they've gone to your Instagram, you know they've gone to your home page, and maybe they've spent a little bit more time on that second or third time coming to your home page. The next stage is intention. So maybe they're signing up for a newsletter. These are just signals that show you where they are in the funnel. Maybe they're signing up for a newsletter, maybe they've signed up for your SMS program, and then there's purchase. The final point of the marketing funnel, the traditional funnel, is loyalty. And so that's when you see that consumer come back repeatedly and and you also tend to see that consumer demonstrating some sort of advocacy for your brand. So advocacy can be demonstrated by writing a review. It could be by following you on a social platform. It could be by organically talking about your brand and putting a hashtag out there. But loyalty can be demonstrated in a few different ways. The flywheel is a more modern, and I will say, recent approach that really looks at the consumer brand interaction as less linear and more fluid and more continuous. And it really it strives to visualize the momentum of what a happy consumer can do for your business through retention and referrals. So the flywheel model is really the focus is on creating happy consumers, and when you have happy consumers, the first thing you need to do is attract those potential consumers, and you're doing that through interactions and visual content, but you have a omnichannel strategy, so you need to attract your consumers in a variety of touch points, some earned meaning PR or word of mouth, some owned meaning, these are the channels that you have domain over, and some that are paid. Then the second is engagement. So you're building a relationship with those consumers you're you're getting them to engage with your brand in more meaningful interactions. And so the. Is where you see more experiential marketing coming in. Maybe you see influencer marketing touching and then the third stage of the modern flywheel is what I refer to as delight. So it's ensuring that your consumers have a positive experience and then they become promoters of your brand. The reason that I like a flywheel versus a funnel is it's a true discussion. It's a dialog. It is to my earlier comment, like it's it's a continuous process. You're continuing to feed the relationship that you have with your consumers, and the consumers are feeding into your business versus the funnel. It's a bit more linear in that you get them to become aware, you get them to demonstrate interest consideration, and you if you even listen to the examples I I used, you could visualize how it's more of a one way interaction until they get to purchase.

William Harris 36:02

Yeah, I like the concept, because as a human being, I feel like the thing that we understand the most, and I believe that we were created to be relational beings. And so I feel like these relationships we have are the things that really stand out as the best metaphors. And when you think about a relationship, let's say you meet somebody, and if all you're doing, you know, there's an awareness that takes place, right? But if all you're doing, let's say that after, after, there's like, a purchase, or after there's an event, or, like, Okay, first date or something, you send out 30 text messages about, like, when our second date is going to be it's it ruins the relationship in a very significant way, but I feel like that's what we do to customers a lot of times, where great, they made a purchase, and the next thing we're gonna do is barely even they've gotten over the purchase. They maybe haven't even received their item, and they're already seeing ads now for what they what we want you to buy again now or by the second time. And it's like you haven't taken the time to actually develop that relationship. And I think that is a big piece that's missing, and I notice it when we look at LTV. So this is the hard part about this. Is the analysis on this has to take over many, many years. But if you do look at it over the course of many years, I think that you'll see that there's a significant difference between the lifetime values of customers that you invest in a relationship with, versus just the customers that you invest in, like you said, to a point, performance marketing, great. Here's another ad for you to retarget if you just bought. So I know that you're going to buy again, so I'm going to just hit you over and over and over and over and over again with more ads to buy Exactly.

Tiffany Wilburn 37:30

And so it's interesting that you talked about the investment component, because they're, they're two different investment strategies. I mean, it's very it's a it's an easier show on on performance marketing, because you can say, Oh, Tiffany was served this ad and Tiffany converted, versus building a relationship with someone. You may not see Tiffany take a move for two or three months, but once Tiffany does, if she has a positive experience and she's satisfied with the brand, not only does she make that purchase, but now she becomes a brand promoter, and then your ROI is going to continue to go down. So now the fact that Tiffany is the ad that tells William you got to buy this widget. You didn't even have to pay to get William to buy the widget. So it's a long term versus more shorter term investment model. But to your point, in the long run, the flywheel pays for itself.

William Harris 38:36

So a lot of the people that we are typically working with are they're initially D to C. They started off direct to consumer, their performance marketing. They're running their Facebook ads, their Google ads, and they're very good at that aspect of things. And we reach a point with them where we start to nudge them along this lines of You need to start moving into some of these higher funnel tactics, building up the brand and the positioning and understanding creating this relationship. How do you create like the next ad that I want to show them, I want to spend some of your money not in showing them a product to buy again. I want to spend some money on getting them become loyal and promoters and getting them to engage and become actual you know, fans of your brand here. How do you how do you work that in from a budget perspective, in a way to where you can show the benefit or, or if you were talking to, let's say, a DTC brand, there, they're at the point. They're at $50 million now. And we're really trying to push them into some other tactics to help level them to that next level, to get them to that 100,000,200 million, $300 million brand, and they're still stuck in the performance marketing spot, and they're still stuck on looking at last click. ROAs, how do you break them out of that mindset to see the importance of taking that next step and that they can't get to where they want to go without starting to make these investments?

Tiffany Wilburn 39:57

Yeah, my. Experience, I've had the best results with demonstrating what that type of approach could do for their business. So it's less about the theory, and it's less talking. It's okay. Let's just put something out there. Let's put something out there that we invest a few $1,000 in to produce, and we put it out there in a way that is testing hypotheses that we may have, and let's see what comes of it, and we iterate from there. I think a lot of brands, there's a lot, a lot of D to C brands that are out there now, and they are very heavily on that performance side. I'd say 9010 if not 100 zero. My experience, I've had the best success if I'm if I'm working with a brand that is very much has an established foundation of that performance marketing experience, if we can slowly get them to a 6040, the ROI for the performance marketing actually increases. And I know it's so it's not intuitive. It's like, well, I'm spending money on this brand marketing activity over here. How is that helping my performance marketing? If Tiffany is targeted with your performance market ad, just in the ad itself, you're talking to Tiffany in a transactional manner about your product. But if Tiffany is targeted with your performance marketing ad, and she's also been targeted with these three other ads that are brand marketing, now Tiffany's bought in on your identity as your identity as a business, and also she starts to see her identity as being shared, and so the conversion on that performance is much easier. You may only have to target her once with that performance ad, versus if it's just about performance, you kind of have to beat me over the head with basically giving it away for free to get me to try it. So you can pay now, or you can pay later.

William Harris 42:01

Yeah, well, and I like where you went with that where, let's say, and I'm going to make up some numbers here, but they'll be relatively intuitive here. If you're targeting somebody for a purchase optimized ad on Facebook, for instance, you might pay a $50 CPM. If you're targeting them for a reach ad or a video view, it might be $5 CPM, and so the ability to target them significantly cheaper with that branded initiative as well, pays for the three four extra, you know, impressions. So when they do see your ad, for them to buy, not only have they seen it three or four times the cost for them to see your your performance at three or four times was a lot higher. You've got those three or four impressions. They've aligned themselves with your brand. Now they see this and they go, that's it. That's the one for me. And to your point that $50 CPM isn't a big deal anymore because they're already primed and ready to

Tiffany Wilburn 42:58

buy. You gotta prime them. That's right. You gotta find them.

William Harris 43:03

One of the things that you were talking about was determining optimal positioning. So you can go two, niche versus not niche enough size of the prize versus the talents. How do you approach figuring out this optimal positioning? Yeah.

Tiffany Wilburn 43:19

So it is a process that I go through during the competitive landscape analysis portion of a project. I mean, positioning is very unique to what playing field we're talking about. Are we online? Are we brick and mortar? Are we food and Bev? Are we Bev? Are we seasonal? Are we every day, you have to be crystal clear about what playing field you're talking about before you start thinking about what your positioning is going to be. The next stage for me is to really do a serious competitive analysis. And the one competitor that always is lost and people forget, but it is like the most obvious competitor from how consumers actually act is do nothing,

William Harris 44:10

sure, yeah, they're just gonna, I'm just gonna keep

Tiffany Wilburn 44:12

using this raggedy widget because I know it and it's here, and why not versus take a chance on something new.

William Harris 44:21

Noble. Noble, 100%

Tiffany Wilburn 44:25

Yeah, the do nothing. Competitor is fierce. I mean, if we're talking about a lunch program, you may think, Oh, my competitor is bead buffalo, wild wings. It's Applebee's, it's Chili's, it could be they're skipping lunch. So you have to be very diligent about doing a competitive landscape analysis and leave no rock uncovered in that analysis. You need to have a very good understanding of not just who your competitors are, but how often are they visiting your. Competitors, and what are they spending at your competitors? Because if they're visiting your competitors five times, but they're spending $1 every time that $5 AOV average order value, compared to when they come to you once a month and they spend $25 do I care? Am I going to prioritize stealing share from that $5 competitor, or am I going to spend my resources elsewhere? So that's all a part of the competitive landscape analysis, and that work leads to positioning. And so positioning for in my business is all around what is distinctive about your business, meaning it, you can't get that anywhere else, exactly how they're doing it. What is differentiated? Okay, I can get that, but it's better, it's faster, it's prettier, it's cheaper, it's spicier. And then the third is very much tied to like your personality, your tone of voice. So it's more about the how, how are you demonstrating your differentiation and your distinctiveness?

William Harris 46:09

I love that. There's another book that I really like called Brand intervention by David Breyer. I don't know if you're familiar with him. Damon John wrote the forward, really interesting book, and he talks about, if everything you're saying is cliche, then you're not building up your your brand. You're just building up, you know, the industry, and I probably butchered the quote, but it's something along those lines, if everybody's saying our eggs are organic, then you don't have organic. Isn't a differentiator anymore. And it reminds me of seven up. And I really appreciate the way they did this, where seven up was like, hey, it's Pepsi. It's coke. Pepsi in us, they're like, We're the uncola. It's like, what's the uncola? Like, literally, right? But they came up with something that was so different that they're like, Oh, now there's this share of mine that I could think of in my mind. I'm like, do I want Cola or uncola. And now it just, like, narrow the choices down from, okay, yeah, Pepsi, Coke them. Now it's just two options. There's Cola or uncola. Yeah,

Tiffany Wilburn 47:08

that's a great example. I hadn't heard that one,

William Harris 47:11

yeah. What about there's a we were talking about the difference between different eyeglasses. What do you mean by the difference between different eyeglasses.

Tiffany Wilburn 47:21

So I wear a lot of eyeglasses. I have a lot of cheaters around my home, and we were having a conversation around my eyeglasses. I literally sitting in front of me today three and I only have two hands, so I'm gonna hold these two, plus the ones that I'm wearing. So what we were talking about is from a differentiation perspective, these Cadis sun or eyeglasses are not differentiated from these Xena eyeglasses. They they both are cheaters. They help me see the screen. They both have a blue blue light technology, so it keeps the glare down as well as the blue light from the screens. So there's not that much that's differentiated. But what is unique about Cadiz is their positioning. They've decided to position their business to target the over 40 crowd who doesn't want to be frumpy, who wants to have a little bit of style, who's a little bit of a rock and roll individual at their heart? And they found a way, in a very crowded category optical lenses, to differentiate their product, even though the product is basically the same. And so that's what we were talking about, is their unique positioning in a crowded market.

William Harris 48:47

I love that, and that reminds me of what, well, liquid death did, right? And sim concept, where it's it's bottled water, there's nothing different at all about their product. They're literally nothing different, but their differentiation, yes, is who they were going after and what it felt like to drink that in the design of the canon, from what I understand, they basically were like, you know, a lot of people want to maybe quit drinking, and so they're, they're rock and roll, and they like this stuff, but they're like, well, but I don't want to just be seen drinking like, regular water. And so, right, I don't want to give up my pop. And so it's like, okay, well, this is, like, something that you can do, still feel cool, still feel like you're a little bit, you know, counter cultural. And it's genius.

Tiffany Wilburn 49:35

Shortcut that I use sometimes is when you're thinking about positioning my my product and fill in the blank. You know, brand. We'll use caddis as an example. Cadiz is a brand for people who, there you go, and that's your positioning. Liquid death is a brand for people who fill in the blank. I like

William Harris 49:58

that. Yeah. If. You can't say that as a founder or VP marketing or whoever you are that's trying to then you don't have the right positioning nailed down now, and you need to work on that. And I can tell you that that's going to make my job a lot easier on the performance marketing side, the advertising we can run for you is going to be significantly more effective if you can say that in a way that differentiates yourself exactly, um, you know, in fact, for those who are listening, who don't realize this, too, the difference between, we've talked about CPMs, um, we did this for a brand one time. They were, they were a CPG brand, they were a beverage brand, um, and uh, X Pepsi, executive founder, like, really, really smart, no sir stuff. But the cost to acquire a customer when we started was around $12 and I really wanted something along the lines of what you just said, where it's like, okay, right now the differentiation was very, very much feature focused, and it's like, that's okay. Like, I need to get into the emotional buyer who is actually buying this and why they're buying this same campaign, same ad set, just a different ad within all of those same things, the Costco card customer went down to like $1.43 I could be off on the exact cent, but the dollar $47.73 something like that was $1 something all Everything else was exact same, same targeting, same everything. And I think to your point, it was because at that time, we repositioned the way that we were approaching this to say, but who is this for and why, versus just this has these health benefits or whatever XYZ features

Tiffany Wilburn 51:37

Exactly, exactly. Another example my business, Clever Disruption that we talked about, it's a marketing firm or a creative business solution firm, but Clever Disruption is for people who aren't afraid to get creative. It is for people who like innovation, people who welcome thinking in a different way, people who are strategic and bold, Clever Disruption is for people who are not afraid to get

William Harris 52:04

creative. I love that. I used to say that I like to think outside the Tesseract because the box was too three dimensional for me. I need the four dimensional. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about science and philosophy. Then we were talking about consumer psychology and how you said people are your widget, cultures, behaviors, what do you mean by people are your widget? Yeah,

Tiffany Wilburn 52:27

so I have been a bit of a unicorn my entire career with my peers, because all of the folks around me tend to have gone to business school. They're a traditional MBA. Their approach to business is very much focused on business first. My education has very much been centered on the consumer, the person. So my graduate degree is in applied sociology and market research. So I have spent years wanting to understand why people act the way they do, not just their own individual psychology, their own beliefs, their own values, but sociology is really the values, the language, the behaviors that we co create. So that's why I say people are my widget. It's it's a matter of understanding and predicting how they will interact with your brand or your business. Once that's a third addition to the equation, Tiffany plus William plus Brand X, what will happen.

William Harris 53:39

I love that. It reminds me a lot of something that a previous guest, Philip Jackson, the founder of future commerce, said, which is Commerce's culture. And I'd never thought about this way, but it really is like it defines culture. Yeah, I agree with that. When we talk about brand versus performance, you and I wanted to talk about the importance of brand, marketing and performance, that it can't be in silos. How do you break down the silos between the two in an organization where there's there's oftentimes separate PNLs, there's separate budgets, there's separate teams. How do you break that down that way? It's one cohesive thing.

Tiffany Wilburn 54:21

Yeah, I think it falls on the responsibility of the leadership team. Truthfully, I think the you know, a modern CEO and a modern cmo understands the importance of synergy, and in my experience, the best examples I've ever had of performance and in brand marketing coming together, as well as consumer insights, category insights, all of that coming together in one cohesive strategy. Those are the examples in the case studies I have where we won when we. The functions were isolated from one another when consumer insights was doing research connected to a product that was never validated from a market fit perspective or the size of the prize, and that size of the prize didn't translate to what r&d was working on and marketing was over here, creating a brand that had to do with, you know, Cookie cracker. And the innovation was on, was on cereal, like, if you have to have that type of cohe cohesive appreciation for how to run the business at the leadership level, so it's the, it's the responsibility of the CEO and the CMO and others in the C suite,

William Harris 55:41

yeah. And I'd say, even having the knowledge to look at the metrics with that lens, one of the things that we'll see on the performance side sometimes right to the point you were calling out before. Let's say we've run several ads that are on the branding side, and then we've got the performance. Performance is doing very, very well. And so we'll see brands sometimes push to us even say, it's like, Hey, look at how well XYZ campaign is doing. Let's turn off those other campaigns and put all the money here. And it's like, well, wait a minute, that campaign is only doing that well because of those other campaigns. You turn those off, and now the performance isn't going to be there. And so having that ability and insight of a CMO to look at these metrics and say the only reason why performance is performing the way that it is is because of these other initiatives. And so it's not a matter of turning these off because they don't have as good of a ROAs, or whatever that might be. These are necessary to get the ROAs on these other campaigns. 100% 100%

Tiffany Wilburn 56:37

I have a 10 year old son, and I often think of him as my little brand that I'm working on. I'm molding him and the brand marketing that I am, I am instilling in him. Those are the seeds of value and behavior and morality that I'm I'm pouring into him. I don't know if I'll ever see the ROI on that work, but what I do see is the performance related ROI, when he's in school and he's making those right decisions, and it's the point of of truth, he's demonstrating through to me, through his performance, that the branding work that I have done over the course of his 10 years does work. Now, if I didn't do that brand work, the performance would fall short.

William Harris 57:28

If it's the classic, if you believe that this chair will support you, you'll go ahead and sit down. But if you don't think that it's going to support you, you're not going to sit down on that. It's like what you're believing within the core of those things show up in the actions. And to your point, it's like what you're doing on the branding side shows up in the performance. And so you have to look at it with that lead. I like that. I want to transition into the who is Tiffany Wilburn section, because I really appreciate getting to know the personality and the individual and the human being behind things. Um, one of the things that you and I were talking about is you were talking about presence and non attachment. And you said, this is, I think, I think it's from a book called The the Yamas in niyamas. I will be the first to admit I know nothing about what you're talking about here, and I would like to hear more. But what is this idea of of attachment, non attachment and presence here, yes,

Tiffany Wilburn 58:22

so the I am a big yogi. I have been in the yoga community probably for 25 plus years, whether that was an individual practitioner. I taught yoga for almost 10 years. I've traveled around the world practicing and teaching yoga, so I'm very much steeped in the beliefs of the community. And one of the preeminent foundational books that most yogis are aware of is the yamas and the niyamas. And that book talks about various principles that apply to yoga, but really they apply to life. And one of the principles that I have really leaned into a lot when it comes to business, when it comes to managing teams, is the principle of non attachment. And non attachment is the premise is that at the root of or the root of suffering, is connected to attachment. When you attach yourself to an ideal outcome and that outcome doesn't materialize, you suffer. You have grief, you feel sorrow, versus if you, if you do not attach yourself to the outcome and instead maintain a solid sense of presence, lean in with all of the training and morality that you already are demonstrating every day, you will not suffer so much so attachment is. Is, in my opinion, the root of suffering. When you attach yourself to an ideal outcome, or you attach yourself to a narrative, I will be, I will do the business will will result in that's where suffering manifests itself, and suffering then translates into poor business decisions happening. It translates into lower Morality with teams. It translates into a dissolving corporate culture. So

William Harris 1:00:32

I like that there's, well, I haven't read that. I'm a Christian, and so I read the Bible very extensively. And so there's a lot of interesting things that you just said that that I was racing my mind and inside, I don't think I've shared this publicly. I've shared it in like, small groups, but I'm going to share it right now because I like where this is going and see what you think about this. In the Bible, it talks about die to self, very similar concept here. And it says that we are vessels unto honor, and a vessel, by definition, is a container. That's that's just what a vessel is. And so we are, let's just say, vessels of the blood of Jesus Christ. And so I am not necessarily expecting you or anybody else necessarily agree with that. I'm just saying follow me with this train of thought for a second. What's interesting is blood vessels have one set of muscle there's only one thing that the blood vessel can do. It can constrict. It's the only thing that muscle can do. It can let go and allow the blood to flow through. And the life is in the blood. Another part of the Bible says the life is in the blood. And so what's interesting is, in my power to kind of what you're saying, If I've I'm going to hold on to this is the end result. The only thing that I can do is constrict the blood flow of Christ. I can constrict the blood or the life, right? If I let go, if I die, to self. Now the blood can flow through me. Now the life can flow through me. And to your point, yes, I can't have necessarily say what the outcome will be, but I can allow that to take place. Yes,

Tiffany Wilburn 1:02:04

it's exactly the same. Exactly the same. It's about letting go, non attachment.

William Harris 1:02:11

It's beautiful. I love that. You also told me about your favorite time of day is in the early morning when you can hear the songbirds sing. Why is that your favorite time of day? And a lot of different times of day, and I'd say that's a great time of day. But why that time

Tiffany Wilburn 1:02:30

it you know, I've always been a morning person. I was never that person that pulled all nighters in college or, I mean, never a late night never, never in my entire life, have I pulled an all nighter? No

William Harris 1:02:42

good for you? No,

Tiffany Wilburn 1:02:46

I am most creative in the morning. I am, you know, I am a lucid dreamer as well. So when I wake up, I remember all of the richness of my dreams and mourning, to me, signifies a new opportunity. It's a blessing that you've been given the opportunity to live life another day, and the songbirds, for me, are important because songbirds only sing when they're not in a state of stress when there's no predator around to attack them, if you think about it, logically, an animal wouldn't draw attention to themselves if they thought there was danger. And so for me, the songbirds signal relaxation.

William Harris 1:03:39

I love it. I will even say that when I'm having a particularly stressful day at work, I will put on, like, you know, they've got their like, 1000 hour things on YouTube or whatever, right where it says, like, nature sounds with songbirds. I really do appreciate that sound of just like the little chirping and the rain and everything. Yeah, I can see how that feels relaxing. And it may be something that's in us where it felt relaxing to us then as well. Let's just even go back to biologically speaking, 1000 years ago, if you heard the songbird singing, they don't see it as cellular predator. Piece is probably not a predator for you at that moment, too. And so it is a good sound, isn't it? It's

Tiffany Wilburn 1:04:16

a subliminal message for us as a human being, to relax. There's no danger around

William Harris 1:04:24

I like that. There's a quote that you live by, and you actually have this on your website as well here. Don't be afraid to get creative. Why is that the quote that you have almost kind of like centered around I love that quote,

Tiffany Wilburn 1:04:39

and I came up with that quote myself. It was a little bit of self talk at one point in my life, and today, it's a rallying cry for others around me who subscribe to that belief, or they want to lean into it, even if they're not there yet. Yeah, but why it's important for me is I have a lot of conversations around vulnerability and risk with a lot of folks, whether it's a business owner I'm talking to, whether it's a new manager that I'm coaching. Everyone is reluctant, or I'll say a lot of people are reluctant to put themselves in a place of vulnerability, and that seems like a big risk. But without vulnerability, we cannot learn. And if we do not learn, we do not grow. And I am very much a growth mindset individual versus a fixed mindset individual. And so when you get over fear and you embrace vulnerability and you lean into authenticity, I think amazing things can happen. I have personally had that happen for myself when I let go of the outcome that I think is going to unfold, and I am not afraid to get creative, whether that's, you know, taking a new project opportunity when I was on the corporate side, or even starting Clever Disruption and being a a founder again, this is the second time I've done my own business. There's there's a lot of reluctancy, I think, in our society, especially for women, especially for black women, to stay the course and to play it safe and to not ruffle feathers and to not rock the boat, but to my earlier comment, if we're not growing, in my opinion, if you're not growing, you're slowly dying, and if you're not growing, you're not learning. So don't be afraid to get creative.

William Harris 1:06:56

I hear a lot of philosophers talk about the light illuminates things with light. We can see everything that's around us, but when the light doesn't touch, there's darkness, and that that is a scary thing, but that is where you learn, right? Because that's what you don't currently know, and you need to go into that darkness to see what's there. Now, yeah, um, and I so I appreciate kind of like, how you took that there. Why do you think that you said specifically for black women that it's hard to to to break out and go through that and to stay the course. You said, yeah, why? Why is it hard for people in general, but why specifically for black women, is that harder?

Tiffany Wilburn 1:07:32

I think it's a matter of authenticity and being afraid of being your authentic self, not only just in a corporate environment, but just in the world, because there's perceptions of what your authenticity might mean to someone else versus what it means to you. So I think you know one thing about me, personally, I I've always worn my hair for the last, I would say, 20 years, in a very natural state, whether that was when I was loose natural, which is just when my hair was curly, or now I have what are called locks. That is authentic to me, because that is an authentic expression of part of my identity, like my hair is my crown and my crown is flowing at this moment, in in their locks. And another example of my authenticity, I am. I am a creative if you haven't already, yes, I'm a very creative individual. So I I have used my body as a canvas in order to demonstrate some of my creativity. So I have probably four or five tattoos that I have actually designed myself that are very expressive, that are they tell the story of my life. They all have very different meanings, and I I was over the age of 35 before I ever got a tattoo, but I didn't have the wisdom yet to appreciate the story that my life was as well as the story that I wanted to memorialize.

William Harris 1:09:13

I am not a black woman, as I'm sure you can tell, but there's one of my absolute favorite musicians is India Ari. And so you were talking about the locks. The song that immediately came to me from hers is, I am not my hair, right? She goes, I am not my hair. I am not your expectations. And if you, if you look at my Apple Music, it's her albums are probably my her and Jack Johnson are probably my top two artists that I listen to and and so I can appreciate what you're saying in a different light, obviously not from from actual perspective, but from hearing it in the song, at least, that it's like, I'm sure that that is like a thing that you have had to to work through. And so I'm glad to hear that you've been able to push through those boundaries, and, like you said, to show your authentic self. I think who your authentic self is absolutely wonderful. Yeah, if there. Are people who are struggling with being able to show their authentic self? Yeah, what are tips that you have to help them to break through those struggles or those fears? Yeah,

Tiffany Wilburn 1:10:13

well, a few instances recently that I've had where individuals were struggling to break through and demonstrate their authentic self. Their struggles were really the underpinning was around assimilation, and it was, well, I don't speak English as a native speaker, so I have an accent and or I don't eat American traditional food. I eat traditional Dominican food. And so they were aspiring to assimilate because they didn't want to stand out. I think that's human nature. In a lot of instances, we all want to be a part of a group. And if we go all the way back to primitive thinking, that's what kept us alive. We William couldn't be off on his own without the protection of his community, and so it's natural for us all to want to assimilate in order to subconsciously protect ourselves. But what to answer your question, What can someone do that is trying to reach more of that authentic state of their self. I think the first is Be kind to yourself. I think we're all we all put a lot of pressure on ourselves, whether it's in what we do and how we do it and when we do it, and we all believe that everyone is looking at us, and that's not the case. It's just not the case at all. The second thing so being gentle to yourself, being kind to yourself and and being aware of the fact that the spotlight is not always on you. I know it feels that way, but it really isn't. The second I would say, would be to be open to talking about what makes you different, and not see that as a risk, potentially see it as an opportunity to inform or inspire or educate. I think a lot of times, folks that are in that that position where they want to be authentic, but they don't know exactly how they they struggle with even just talking about what makes them different. And we started this conversation from a brand and marketing perspective, talking about differentiation and distinctiveness and how important it is. It's the lifeblood of a business, but from a human perspective, for some primitive reason we don't appreciate that equally. So I would say talking about your differences, talking about what makes you unique, and really putting yourself in environments where you have allies around you who champion that type of behavior good for you for wearing your nose ring to the board meeting, or good for you for wearing your hair in the way that you authentically have always worn it, or good for you for speaking up in the meeting with your thick Dominican accent. Your voice needs to be heard, so having allies around you is very important, in my opinion, for those individuals to open their throat chakra, to use the voice that God gave them and find their authentic place in this world.

William Harris 1:13:33

Yeah, I think that's beautiful. And I'm glad that you called it back to the differences we were talking about earlier, because I was going to do the same thing with the eggs we were talking about, you know, the farmer's eggs, or these different eggs that didn't fit into the different slots and were considered almost like, Okay, well, these are the eggs that we don't know what to do with. And it's like, wait a minute, these are actually the premium eggs. These are the eggs that have these extra special things that are even better. And so, like you said, that accent, or whatever that hair or whatever it might be, it's like those are the things that make you extra unique, and in a sea of sameness, we need that uniqueness to be able to break through, like you said, the noise even, yes, yes, that's good, Tiffany, it's been absolutely wonderful talking to you. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge, your wisdom and your heart with us today. If people wanted to work with you or get in touch or follow you, what's the best way for them to do that, go to

Tiffany Wilburn 1:14:28

CleverDisruption.com you can schedule some time, and we can have a conversation about what your business challenge is and how I can support you on that challenge. Or you can always engage with me on Instagram. @CleverDisruption on Instagram as well. We have fun over there.

William Harris 1:14:46

No, that's great. I appreciate that. And again, I appreciate you coming out here today and talking to us.

Tiffany Wilburn 1:14:51

Thank you. Happy to participate,

William Harris 1:14:55

everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Have a great rest of your day

Outro 1:14:59

Thanks. For listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, we'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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