Building a Billion Dollar Brand with Innovation & Stories with Sam Olawale

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network! with great shows like Marketing Against the Grain. Today, we'll be breaking down how to build a billion-dollar brand with innovation and stories. To drop these value bombs, I already brought Sam Oluwali into EO Fire Studios. Sam is a multi-eight-figure entrepreneur who finds the genius in other people, creates revolutionary products, and uses the power of storytelling through social media to build brands. And today, Fire Nation, we're talking about product innovation, content innovation, storytelling and social media, scaling your business with systems, and so much more.

0:38And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Sam and our sponsors. Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. If you've been sizing NetSuite up to make the switch, then take advantage of their special financing offer today. Defer payments of a full NetSuite implementation for six months.

1:10No interest, no payments. Visit netsuite.com slash fire to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. That's netsuite.com slash fire. Sam, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? My name is Sam Olawale, and I think the number one thing I hear touted around a lot when it comes to being successful is find a problem and deliver a solution to that audience, and you can build a business. And I think that's not necessarily completely wrong. I'll just say it's massively overused.

1:55And to keep it simple, it's because problem-solution is the most basic form of transformation. people for whatever it is they always buy transformations whether it's through a product or a service they're paying to go from point a to point b but if you want to be really really astute and build a business that's timeless and really profitable you need to sell more than just problem solution what you need to do is sell identity transformation which is the highest form of selling. And once you're able to do that, then I think that us through the myth of find a problem, deliver a solution, it's too rudimental.

2:38It's too rudimental. Identity transformation is where it's at if you want to build a thriving, successful brand. Fire Nation, apply that to your business, to your solutions to problems. Are you providing identity transformations? Because as Sam is sharing, that's what people want. And we're talking about building a billion dollar brand with innovation and stories. And two powerful topics that you love talking about, Sam, are product innovation and content innovation. Tell us more. Full disclosure, I'm not a billion-dollar brand yet, but I believe that we are well on the way there. And when it comes to the decision to be or build a billion-dollar brand, the number one thing I think everyone understands is foundational to whatever business you have, the product.

3:25product innovation is the driving force you can have the best marketing in the world and i know it's the age old you know um argument between what's more important marketing or product but i just think it's safe to say without a phenomenal product and bringing innovation to a marketplace is going to be very difficult because if you want to build a billion dollar brand you've got to own the means of production you need to own the product that you're selling And if you're going to break into a marketplace and instead of fighting over a red ocean, you really want to build a blue ocean for you to swim in and grow into.

4:03You need to bring innovation and innovation can be done in a multitude of ways. Easiest form is obviously changing aesthetics. The second hardest form is changing, let's say, the functionality of how something works. And the highest form is functionality and aesthetics and problem solution, like I said at the beginning. So when you're able to put all of that into one category, that's when you get revolutionary breakout products like like the iPhone or, you know, the jet engine, things like this that are really foundational to how we live now. So, yeah, that's that's what I think innovation is and why it matters to entrepreneurs.

4:44You've got to focus on your product first and foremost. And then to go along with that, which is the other side of the argument, the marketing side, which is content. When I talk marketing, I start with content. That's the first touchpoint any business has with your, sorry, any customer has with your business or brand. It is your marketing, not just paid marketing. But when I say marketing, I mean anything that involves you presenting to a prospective customer. So content innovation is really about crafting narratives. I always tell people who own businesses that are focused on marketing leading the way, paid social, so on and so forth.

5:24If you want to let your product teams be better, if you want to let your marketing teams be better, the number one thing you should have them do is get them to study film. Hollywood is the number one industry when it comes to selling something that's completely intangible They sell nothing but a story and if they get the story right if they are able to wow you for an hour and a half to two hours In a cinema or at home They make hundreds of billions of dollars If they get it wrong, they lose hundreds of millions of dollars So I really think it's that much of a knife edge And since they are the epitome of selling story, if you want to learn how to build a brand that is story driven for your business and for what you do, study Hollywood.

6:14Study how they make films. Study how they write scripts. Study how they deliver archetypes and depth and richness in what they do and apply that to your business and brand. Fire Nation, a lot of takeaways here. There are some things that I was writing down for notes is content is first and foremost with your marketing. You need to craft narratives. That is such a key part of this process. Think about that, Fire Nation. Product is first and foremost. Content is first and foremost when it comes to your marketing. Now, one thing that you really believe in, Sam, is the power of storytelling. So I want to talk about storytelling and I want to talk about applies to social media.

6:59How do we do this the right way? It's a brilliant question. It's one of my favorite topics as well. You see, storytelling, I think, is a craft that has stood the test of time. And it's actually one of the most, I would say, pivotal reasons as to why human beings are the epitome or the apex of society or of the world, of the universe, basically. We don't know of any intelligent life outside of the earth and we are top of the food chain. And I would say that goes, number one, to storytelling. Being able to pass stories and wisdom from generation to generation is why we are all here right now. And how this applies to the new medium of social media, and social media is new.

7:43If you look at the existence of how we've done things as a species, social media is completely new, a blink of an eye thing. and people are still trying to understand with a myriad of different platforms how storytelling is done properly and I would say this it goes back to my previous point storytelling whether you're doing it on TikTok or you're doing it in YouTube whether you have a VSL or you have 30 seconds to present something storytelling isn't just about one piece of content it's about like like we just mentioned, crafting a narrative, a story around the brand and the product you're building.

8:21And the word I think encapsulates it the most is the brand fantasy. When someone closes their eyes, whether you realize it or not, they have images, words, feelings, emotions, associations connected to your brand. And you're lucky even if they do. Most of the time, 99.9 % of businesses out there have zero association because if someone closed their eyes, no one knows who the hell they are. So from the beginning, storytelling isn't just about one piece. It's about being conscientious to say, right, we have this product and we want to sell it in A, B, C, D, E, F, G ways. You won't know what's the best way straight away.

9:04You've got to do a lot of testing. You've got to find the right message. You've got to find the right audience. But when you do, it's then down for you to make that story as rich as possible. Some of the biggest brands in the world, okay, the reason they're so big is because they have such a deep, rich legacy, heritage, and story that the average person thinks it's just, oh, why do I love X brand so much? It's just because I do. It's not. If you actually look behind it, there are so many intangibles. And again, I'm not necessarily the most spiritual person, but I do believe in energy and the power of the spoken word.

9:43And if you put something out there, invariably, it leaves an imprint. So these high heritage brands, they have such deep stories if you look behind them. And I believe that's why they're so prestigious. They're so highfalutin, let's say. Not in a bad way, but they hold such esteem amongst people. If you talk about some of the most, you know, whether it's fashion or cars or whatever it may be, or even sports teams, they have a history that comes with such depth of story that that intangible is what naturally gravitates people to them so when you craft a story online it's more about again i can't give you specifics now in this short form but i just want everyone to understand that if the more the more in depth you take the story of what you're doing to heart don't think nobody sees it they do They do.

10:34They really, really do. You can't fake it. When you're legit, when you're genuine, you can't fake that. So if you have a genuine intention to craft a brilliant story, and like I said, study Hollywood. Study how they do it. There is a formula, people. This is not by accident. It is by design. So if you really invest into crafting a brand narrative and a brand fantasy and a brand story, believe you me, it will pay you back in kind. Fire Nation, as Sam's talking, I'm just picturing all the brands that I respect, that I admire, that I look up to. And I can easily trace the fact that it's really the story that they've been able to portray over time that's super meaningful.

11:16And it just kind of brought me back, actually, to this time when this guy was talking about this Mercedes commercial. And it seemed like it was kind of directed towards kids. Like, why are you directing this Mercedes commercial towards kids? I mean, they can't buy a Mercedes, obviously. He's like, I know, but those are the people in 10, 15, 20 years that are going to be buying Mercedes. We're planting the story now with them so that for the rest of their life, up to the point they can afford a Mercedes, that that's the story they think about when they think about the brand Mercedes. And I always thought that was very interesting.

11:48And we have so many important things to talk about, Fire Nation, when we get back from thanking our sponsors. We all want the same things for our business. more leads, faster sales, and better insights so we can serve our customers at the highest level. One thing we all don't want, to waste time and money trying to figure these things out. So what's the solution? A CRM that's easy to set up and customize. Sounds too good to be true, right? But this CRM exists and it's called HubSpot. What sets HubSpot apart is it's easy to use and integrate. Instead of wasting days or even months trying to figure everything out, HubSpot gives you tools like their AI content assistant, which helps you save time on tedious manual tasks right away.

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13:3633 ,000 companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, and now it's your turn. If you've been sizing NetSuite up to make the switch, then you know this deal is unprecedented. No interest, no payments. Take advantage of this special financing offer at NetSuite.com slash fire, NetSuite.com slash fire, to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. nestsuite.com slash fire. Sam, we're back and you believe in scaling your business with systems. I mean, I'm a huge believer in this as well. That's how we've built Entrepreneurs on Fire to where it is today with a very, very small team, just five of us, because we have the systems in place.

14:13And I want to hear your perspective on this. Yeah, for sure. Well, you're what I call an OG, for sure uh the eofire has been around from the seems like the dawn of time so yeah you guys are old g's in this in this game so no surprise but yeah i mean systems is look it's the hardest thing so we specialize a lot and we love i love creative people right i'm not necessarily the most creative myself but i know how to manage grow and bring out the genius in creative people but one of the biggest things that I think has led to our success is being able to take brilliant, truly, truly brilliant people, whether that's in product design, video editing, storytelling, film making product, whatever it may be, you've got to give super creative people, especially if you're in an industry like ours, where we're very focused on content and marketing, and so on and so forth.

15:07You've got to give them not necessarily guardrails, but you've got to systemize what they do. And systemizing creative endeavors is the hardest thing, because the more you systemize, the more you take away the flexibility creative people need to, you know, to release their juices and let their imagination run wild. But if you're going to get to scale, and I'm not just talking about the systems of any ordinary business, like you need accounting, you need, you know, HR, all of these things can be systemized quite easily. okay and we specialize in this right but the thing that i want to focus on when it comes to systems is creative creativity now systems for us isn't just a a byproduct or something that happens by accident we are very deliberate with it and when i say deliberate i genuinely mean that we take the time every single quarter for everybody in our team and we do everything using okrs on a quarterly basis everybody in our team builds new systems we actually give some of these out to the public but most of the time 90 % of them are for internal because we understand as a team that we're only as good as the systems and processes we rely on with each other and it's down to you to be responsible enough to have a brilliant process in place because god forbid something happens to you or you can't turn up that day someone else has to be able to step into that role and execute to the highest degree because you owe it to the business you owe it to the mission that we're on to not let you be the weak link if something god forbid happens to you and this is the approach everyone in our team has it's a very selfless approach the system itself or systemizing our entire business isn't about us trying to be anal or micromanage it's the complete opposite actually we're very open and laissez-faire in our team but everyone just realizes it's my duty to keep everything as structured, as clean, as organized as possible, because I have to work with other people.

17:07Everything we do is a team endeavor. So if I'm working in a team, I can't have my space in the business be a mess. It's not fair because everyone else has this. So regimented, so organized. And we have some brilliant people in our team who just focus on helping everyone else scale with their systems. So it is an absolute, I would say, critical component to growth. Once you have a brilliant product and you know how to make brilliant content and marketing and sell it so well, the next big stage, which I think hinders a lot of entrepreneurs, to go from solopreneur to real entrepreneur, that system delivery phase, system creation phase is something many people struggle with.

17:49And most of the time, it's not your product that's slowing you down or stopping you. It's not your marketing. It's your inability to build systems and hire brilliant people to execute on those systems. So if anyone out there is listening and you've got a roadblock for years, you can't can't get past, I promise you start by looking at your systems first, product, and marketing second. I promise you this. Fire Nation, powerful words. Where are your systems at right now? That's something that Kate and I are always working on upgrading. What can we do to upgrade our systems, to improve our systems, to scale our systems?

18:22What can we do? We're always thinking about that. And sometimes it's just those minor tweaks, those slight edges over time compounding to something amazing. And Sam, I want to move into the topic of fulfilling your inner CEO's journey. Talk to us about that. Wow. Yeah, this is again, you know what's so funny from the start of this talk when we're talking about story? Do you know how I've just brought this back into story again, fulfilling your CEO's inner hero's journey? This is just means the story you want on your life as an entrepreneur, as a CEO. So that's the story you're writing every day you wake up and every day you turn up or you don't turn up.

19:07You're always writing your story. So I love that phrase because that's exactly what it is. It's your own inner hero's journey. No one can do your press ups for you. No one can. Only you can do those press ups. So for me, one of the big things I think when it comes to this is taking a step up from being an entrepreneur to being a CEO. this is probably one of the hardest things especially in the digital space whether you do you know the digital business everyone's online these days right so if you do anything with a computer and you run a business from a laptop whatever that may be stepping up from hustle culture and being an entrepreneur to a ceo takes not just the systems like we spoke about but it really involves a mindset shift that i think is one of the biggest it's kind of like when you watch a Hollywood film right there's always a point in the film where the the protagonist the hero or the soon-to-be hero gets to what we call the darkness before the dawn the big challenge when they thought they couldn't achieve that goal when when when Luke Skywalker couldn't defeat Darth Vader and didn't know how to do it and then even though Yoda and Obi-Wan were helping him and giving him all the guidance, which is a huge thing, positioning your brand as the guide instead of the hero, but that's another discussion.

20:25But in that story there, he had a choice to make. He had to step up to the plate and deliver to fulfill his hero's journey. And I believe the entrepreneur to CEO step is where many people falter, because it's one thing to know how to make money, but knowing how to hire other people, put the systems in place and graduate yourself into becoming a coach and really a motivator and inspirational leader is very different to being hands-on in the business making money so the inner hero's journey for me is about taking whatever business you may be it doesn't have to be a digital business whatever it may be but at some point you go through what i call the seasons of entrepreneurship just like we have every year if you want to study uh the world or be successful in any way shape or form study natural law and And nature is the best thing we have.

21:18Nature is our mother, right? It's birthed everyone and everything we could ever know in the history of existence. And nature works in cycles. Every year, we have four seasons. And it goes the same through your life. Everyone's life is finite. At some point, we will all take our last breath on this earth. And you have to understand that just like there's seasons in your life, you're born, you're a toddler, you then go to school, then you're a teenager, and then you go into your early 20s and then your 30s and everyone has seasons, right? And when you look back over your life, you'll see that it's broken down into defining moments.

21:54Your entrepreneur journey as a CEO is the same microcosm. It's the same. When you started this crazy idea that everyone thought you were crazy or nuts to try and do, you scrape the money together. You don't know how you survived the first year, but you made it happen. Then the next year comes along, new challenges. You made it happen. Every step, you have to wear different hats. At the beginning, you wore every hat in your business, right? You know this, John, I know this. So at the beginning, you wear every hat. But at some point, if you want to get big, if you want to really fulfill your potential, you've got to develop and grow into the person you're going to be.

22:28Jim Rowan is one of my favorite speakers of all time, right? If anyone doesn't know, everyone talks about Tony Robbins. Jim Rowan was who Tony learned from. And the thing that he says that really, really, I think penetrates deeply to me anyway is as you're going through this journey of becoming who you are money wants a good place to stay you don't you don't you don't get money money isn't out there to be gotten and that's one of the it's a false thing in our language it's bad language to say that we go out there and get money no we don't earn money we don't get money what we do is you attract it.

23:07And are you good enough to evolve into a person that can attract, you know, the first million dollars? And then you do the next things in your next growth. Can you attract $10 million? Then can you get to the next phase and attract$50 million? Then can you attract$100 million, so on and so forth. So as I've gone through the gears of my entrepreneurial hero's journey, it's so true that it's not about getting money or earning money. It's about putting the things in place to then let the money come to you yes there's many roadblocks and that might seem a bit you know antiquated or cliche but it really isn't are you worthy enough i'll tell you one thing most people who win the lottery end up being broke i believe within three to five years no matter how much they earn or win in that lottery do you know why because they don't level themselves up to be someone worthy enough let's say they won five million bucks if you don't become a five million dollar person you'll quickly lose all that money and this is just a fact so it's about bringing yourself up and elevating yourself up first and then the money comes if you by some flute get the money first without raising yourself as a standard to be a person worthy of earning that money you will lose it very quickly be very wary of being lucky many people say it's better to be lucky than smart that's ridiculous that's ridiculous if you're lucky, you will soon deviate back to your mean.

24:32And if your mean is below where your level of luck has given you, eventually it will all go away. Fire Nation, countless value bombs here. I hope you go back and listen to this whole section again. So many good words that were shared. Something that I wanted to point out that I loved was the seasons of entrepreneurship. We need to realize that that is a fact. We go through cycles. We go through seasons. Nature is our mother. I love that phrase. Think about that. And Sam, you have dropped, as I just mentioned, countless value bombs. Give us the one key takeaway you want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our chat here today, the best way that we can connect with you, any call to action you have, and then we'll say goodbye.

25:13The last key takeaway I would say is one tiny thing. You see, as I've gone through my journey in life, I used to always think, you know, I was bullied at school, this, that, and the other, and I always had a chip on my shoulder and always wanted to be the smartest person in the room. I always wanted to be the most successful person I knew. And my life changed about three years ago when I stopped trying to be the smartest or the best in the room. And I decided instead of trying to be a genius myself, I decided to become a genius maker. And when you can take the time to find the genius in others and recruit brilliant people and get them to rally around the cause, a mission bigger than themselves, bigger than you, and then you take these people and bring them together to be greater than the sum of their parts and you're able to find the genius especially in creative people my life changed beyond ways i can i cannot even describe here everything i have everything i will ever have i have to give down to the number one skill of stopping to focus on selling products which i still do brilliantly but i turned all my attention towards selling people not on me but on themselves and bringing out more they ever thought they could be so that i would say is my number one uh my last and final takeaway to everybody stop trying to be the genius and instead of being the genius in the room be the genius maker in the room and yeah you can you can go to um we actually give away all these systems um a lot of them for free you can go to my website um digital supersystems.com and that's digital supersystems.com You can Google it the usual ways.

26:52I'm sure you'll find it. And basically we just give all the systems we use internally away for free I'm obviously on YouTube as well. You can Google me Sam Oluwel on YouTube check me out there. I'm gonna be posting again I'm just so so busy, but it is something I'm taking much more seriously in the next coming months But anyone who wants to level up their systems We've got systems on creativity on on leadership on on structuring your business go to digital super systems calm you will get so much value there. Yeah, and I hope it can uplift and help so many entrepreneurs break through that barrier from entrepreneur to CEO.

27:30Because once I started working with Brilliant Systems and started working to find the genius in others and empowering them and becoming their coach and their mentor, everything changed for me. And I hope it can do the same for all of you listening. And it will be our pleasure to help in any little way to assist the next minds of tomorrow. Just like the aforementioned Jim Rohn, Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with SO and JLD today, so keep up that heat. Links for everything we talked about today, go to eofire.com. Type Sam in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up.

28:08Sam, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. My pleasure. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Sam for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. And we're talking step by step. Visit thefreedomjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

28:48Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. If you've been sizing NetSuite up to make the switch, then take advantage of their special financing offer today. Defer payments of a full NetSuite implementation for six months. No interest, no payments. Visit netsuite.com slash fire to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. That's netsuite.com slash fire.