From Video Production to Creative Entrepreneurship | Kevin Rapp

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this conversation, Christian Brim interviews Kevin Rapp, the Chief Creative Officer of Ultra Friends, a creative problem-solving company. They discuss the origins of Ultra Friends, the importance of understanding client needs, and the impact of creative work on business success. Kevin shares his journey from video production to entrepreneurship, emphasizing the value of creative solutions in solving complex business problems. The conversation highlights the need for professionals to recognize their impact beyond just their skills, and the importance of storytelling in connecting with audiences. In this conversation, Kevin Rapp discusses the evolution of his business, Ultra Friends, and the importance of valuing creativity in the business world. He emphasizes the systemic factors that devalue creative work and the internalization of this devaluation by creatives themselves. The discussion also covers the need for better communication between creatives and business owners, the importance of trust in creative solutions, and the shift from presenting concepts to hypotheses in creative pitches. Rapp advocates for proactive creative solutions and the recognition of the unique contributions that creatives make to business and culture.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS....

• Ultra Friends is a creative problem-solving company.
• Creative solutions can address larger business problems.
• Understanding client needs is crucial for success.
• The journey from employee to entrepreneur can be validating.
• Creative work can significantly impact business growth.
• Building a differentiated brand is essential in competitive markets.
• Storytelling must connect to tangible value.
• Professionals should recognize their worth beyond skills.
• The best metrics for success involve understanding impact.
• Collaboration and friendship can lead to successful partnerships. The timing was right for Kevin to start Ultra Friends.
• Collaboration between different backgrounds enhances creativity.
• Many creatives struggle with valuing their work.
• Systemic factors devalue creative work in the industry.
• Creatives often internalize external devaluation.
• Charging for services is essential to establish value.
• Mismatched power dynamics can hinder creative partnerships.
• Teaching the impact of creativity is often overlooked.
• The learning process from creative tests can be invaluable.
• Proactive solutions can save time and resources in creative work.

Ready to turn your PASSION into PROFIT?!? Let's get CREATIVE ➡️
https://www.coregroupus.com/profit-first-for-creatives

Transcript

Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Kevin Rapp. I didn't ask you before the show, is there a company you're associated with besides Kevin? Kevin Rapp.

Kevin Rapp (00:27.62)
Sure. Yeah, the name of my business is called Ultra Friends. I'm the chief creative officer. We're a creative problem solving company.

Christian Brim (00:33.654)
Okay.

Christian Brim (00:39.638)
I love that. Ultimate friends, right? Ultra friends. so how'd you come up with that name?

Kevin Rapp (00:42.455)
Ultra Friends.

Kevin Rapp (00:46.73)
Okay, so my business partner is a former design director at Twitter. His name's Travis McCleary and he and I are ultra level friends and we were playing the game Pokemon Go and when you share gifts with people, you enhance your friendship status and we reached the level of ultra friends.

Christian Brim (01:03.456)
Yes?

Kevin Rapp (01:13.208)
That's the level of friendship status that we achieved in Pokemon Go. And we thought that was just a hilarious phrase to be given. from there, we were just like, yeah, that's it. That's the name of the studio.

Christian Brim (01:13.537)
I love it.

Christian Brim (01:26.282)
Yeah, who could say you're not ultra friends? mean, how do you even define that? Exactly.

Kevin Rapp (01:28.697)
No one can. And we kind of expand that to include the contractors that we work with, the clients that we work with. Everybody's an ultra friend.

Christian Brim (01:40.78)
I love it. So at Ultra Friends, I heard you recently speak at the Onward Summit and I found your presentation fascinating. I am curious, I think I know, but tell me exactly what you do at Ultra Friends.

Kevin Rapp (01:49.7)
Thank you.

Kevin Rapp (01:58.692)
Sure. Sure. So it's hard for me to say, you know, this is our lane, this is our niche because we do everything from branding to web design to video content creation to, you know, overall creative marketing strategy for brands. So we're kind of all over the map. And so that's why I kind of describe us as creative problem solvers. We are

Christian Brim (02:25.217)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rapp (02:26.464)
Not the type of company that you contract when you say, hey, we have this very specific brief. We just need somebody to come in here and make it look pretty. We are the type of company that you contract when you have a business problem that needs solved and you need creative experts that can help you assess the type of creative solutions that are going to solve those bigger business problems.

Christian Brim (02:57.762)
Yeah, because that was my follow-up question is what problem do you solve and it sounds like the creative ones. That's the ones that need the creative juice.

Kevin Rapp (03:02.926)
Yeah

100 % and that can be everything from we're a B2B company and we need to increase our visibility so that we can get bigger sales with bigger brands. We need to pitch bigger. We need to increase our customer base. We need to elevate our brand awareness. We need to help recruit the top talent. There's all sorts of really big business problems that we are helping brands solve.

And I think by focusing on not just what is the creative, what is the concept, we're really diagnosing the problems that these businesses have and how creative can be a huge lever that they can pull in order to solve some of the biggest problems in the business.

Christian Brim (03:49.09)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:00.758)
You're a physician.

Kevin Rapp (04:03.008)
Yes, that's a great way to put it is that we, you know, you can take some somebody and just say, you know, you can go into a doctor's office and say, hey, I need this exact medicine for this exact problem, right, that I that I'm facing. But a good doctor isn't just going to go, OK, well, you asked for this pill. here it is. A good doctor is going to say, well, let's really get to the root of the the problem here. What are your symptoms? What are you what are you seeing?

What are you experiencing and what would be a healthier lifestyle for you? And then let me actually diagnose what the real problem is. And then I can come up with the right treatment to get you to a healthier lifestyle.

Christian Brim (04:43.723)
Right.

Christian Brim (04:50.996)
And you know, that's interesting. I've said this on the show a couple of times, but I think that professionals in general, so I don't think just those in the creative spaces like marketing, but accountants, lawyers, you know, I don't know about engineers. I don't talk to many engineers. They treat the symptoms. They don't necessarily find the underlying cause.

Kevin Rapp (05:13.625)
Yes.

Christian Brim (05:20.436)
I guess that's a decent business model because it's recurring because if you don't ever solve the problem, right, there's always symptoms, right? So tell us the story about how you came to Ultra Friends. Like what happened before that?

Kevin Rapp (05:25.604)
There are always symptoms.

Kevin Rapp (05:35.042)
Yeah, sure. Yeah, so my background is in video production. I started as a video editor and animator many, many moons ago and worked my way up through the studio pipeline. So started at smaller studios and then got to work on bigger studios and work with bigger brands and got into a directorial position. And then I had this really wild opportunity to go work for a startup.

there was a company called root insurance that, at the time was a series B, a hundred person little startup that was looking for somebody to run their video department. And I had worked with them before they were a client of ours. And I really liked the product. I really liked what they were doing and figured I really want a little bit more strategic opportunity to see behind the curtain rather than just seeing what the briefs are. then.

making the video and then it goes into the void and I have no idea what happens. I'd love to get more insight into the process and see what happens. And so this just felt like the right opportunity. And so I spent four years there and in that time we went from a little 100 person startup to an 1800 person public company, which was just an incredible

Christian Brim (07:00.268)
That was an interesting journey.

Kevin Rapp (07:02.338)
Yeah, an interesting hair on fire journey a lot of the time. But it was something that was incredibly valuable to really not just get to put my creative chops into practice, because that's something that it feels like in the creative industry when you're on the agency or studio side is, you know, I am here to take orders and

Christian Brim (07:07.744)
Yes.

Christian Brim (07:11.862)
Sure.

Kevin Rapp (07:30.87)
execute this to the best of my ability, right? To bring my perspective to this that is going to execute this prompt as masterfully and as ambitiously as I possibly can with the level of technical excellence that I hope to achieve. But it's rare to really feel like I am

Christian Brim (07:42.475)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (07:59.574)
attacking the real problem. And it's rare to get a sense of understanding of how well it performed, really. Like a lot of the times, the best metric that I have for the success of a project was if the client came back, right? We would never go, yeah, here's the data. We increased our brand awareness by 15%, which is what we were going. We were going for 10, you gave us 15. So we'd love to work with you again.

Christian Brim (08:08.705)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (08:28.43)
we'd never get that data was just like, yeah, we liked working with you. So we're gonna work with you again. And I wanted something deeper. I wanted to really understand the impact of what I do and get better at being able to apply my skills. And this was an incredible opportunity to do that. I really got to see the data.

Christian Brim (08:36.671)
Right.

Kevin Rapp (08:56.29)
behind the content I was creating, I got to see the true business impact of what I was doing, and I got to really see just how valuable creative truly is. Because I really don't think that company grows the way it grew without the creative team helping them figure out how to tell their story.

Christian Brim (09:07.937)
Yes.

Christian Brim (09:20.384)
Yes. Yes.

Kevin Rapp (09:21.54)
We were a car insurance company, right? And car insurance is one of the most heavily advertised industries in the world. There are billions spent on advertising in the car insurance space. mean, literally try and watch a commercial break without seeing at least one car insurance advertisement. I think you'll have a hard time doing that. And...

Christian Brim (09:45.536)
Yeah. And it seems, it seems like all of them are about how cheap they are. Yeah. I I'm like, yeah, as a business model, I'm sitting there going, well, do you realize that if you're the cheapest, that means all you're going to do is fight me on your claim. You know, that, that, that's the business model. Right. So I'm like, and you talk about red water marketing and red water business model, not that that should surprise us because insurance is, a

Kevin Rapp (09:51.236)
100 %

Kevin Rapp (10:03.788)
Exactly. Exactly.

Christian Brim (10:14.87)
very old, very conservative industry. But it's like, those are the people that could absolutely use the creative juice because no one else is doing it.

Kevin Rapp (10:18.094)
Very much so.

Kevin Rapp (10:28.686)
And not only that, but it's a product no one wants. Right? Like it's not a thing that you desire to buy. It's a bill, right? It's an expense. It is something that I am legally required to have in order to drive in the state of Ohio, right? It's not something that is desirable. And so a lot of the times, the things that you can advertise on are price or you can advertise on

Christian Brim (10:32.502)
Yes, yes.

Christian Brim (10:38.828)
Yes.

Christian Brim (10:49.013)
No.

Christian Brim (10:54.656)
Right?

Kevin Rapp (10:58.574)
brand and that typically is just like humor, right? Like I'm gonna put a rejected SNL sketch up on the TV and you could swap out the logos at the end and it doesn't, you really don't know the difference between who's what because they're trying to make this thing that is really kind of dull and an abstract concept that no one actually wants desirable.

Christian Brim (11:00.033)
Right.

Right.

Christian Brim (11:13.812)
Right. Right.

Christian Brim (11:28.098)
So how did you approach it at root?

Kevin Rapp (11:31.374)
So the way we approached it is we really had a differentiated product in the market, which is very difficult and one of the hardest parts of building a differentiated brand is having something that is unique in the market. So Root was a car insurance company that developed a smartphone app that measured driving behavior. So the app through the sensors in your smartphone could measure how hard you break. It can measure

how often you're picking up your phone while you're driving. And so it can measure the behavior that is most likely to cause car accidents. And guess what? That tells you more about how likely you're to cause an accident than your credit score, which is how car insurance is already currently priced. is mostly entirely based on demographics, right? And so they made driving behavior

the number one factor in your pricing model. And yeah.

Christian Brim (12:34.506)
Yeah, I want to pause there and say that I think that the credit score, there is no correlation to your driving. is simply, if you have a higher credit score, you're a more profitable customer for them. mean, so it, yeah, it was, it was nothing around the risk element. It was, it was really around the profitability. So I'm sorry, go ahead.

Kevin Rapp (12:53.23)
BINGO!

Kevin Rapp (13:03.224)
Yeah, elements like zip code and credit score do not tell us anything about your driving ability. They tell us how poor you are or how rich you are. That is what they tell you. And so those factors being utilized tend to penalize people from marginalized communities. To put it very reductively, car insurance can be a tax on the poor. And so,

Christian Brim (13:13.77)
Right, right.

Christian Brim (13:29.302)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (13:32.248)
Building this product that was designed to benefit people from marginalized communities, that was designed to provide a fairer experience in the car insurance industry, gave us something really powerful to build a brand around. It gave us this opportunity to really say something meaningful in a space that is often very devoid of meaning. So we had an opportunity

to be disruptive with the way we utilize brand. So when you ask how did we come to this space, we really said we want to have a message that feels very different and a brand that feels very different than any other advertiser you'd see in the car insurance industry.

Christian Brim (14:25.516)
So let's pivot and discuss how you started Ultra Friends. Like what led to that?

Kevin Rapp (14:31.79)
Sure, yeah. So the experience of working at Root taught me so, so much. It really gave me a completely different perspective than what I had about the value of creative work since I started my career, right? In my opinion, prior to joining that company, the craft was the value of what I did.

Right? My creative perspective, my ability to channel a brief into something that was beautiful and eye catching and creatively ambitious was what I had to offer. And that was the thing that was unique about me. But as I got to root and as I worked through that experience of really seeing, no,

Christian Brim (15:01.468)
me.

Kevin Rapp (15:30.718)
I can help triple a policy count for a company. I can help build a brand and tell their story in a way that captures the public's imagination that influences them to make behavior change.

Christian Brim (15:46.976)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (15:47.896)
That, that is magic. Like, that is something that is incredibly powerful. And it taught me that what we do is so much more valuable than I've ever given it credit for. And...

Christian Brim (15:53.174)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (16:09.044)
Yeah, and I think what you're saying right there is the money shot. This is true for all professional services, but creatives specifically, is they get caught up in the skill without understanding the impact.

Kevin Rapp (16:34.883)
Yes.

Christian Brim (16:35.43)
And you know, like I'll take it over to our industry. Accounting, another highly sexy and interesting industry. Not unlike insurance. You know, everybody loves to pay for accounting, right? It's their favorite. It's right up there with going to the dentist. The...

Kevin Rapp (16:52.324)
It's their favorite.

Christian Brim (17:00.546)
You can be incredibly good at your skill, know, debits and credits and reconciling and knowing your, your, your tax code and, all this other stuff, but really have no clue what impact it has on the business owner, the client, right? And, and until you understand the impact that you can have and, and

Kevin Rapp (17:20.132)
Absolutely.

Christian Brim (17:28.3)
probably more importantly, the impact that the business is looking for, like what problem are they looking to have solved? You really can't extract great value. You become a commodity just like insurance, right? And it's just like, what's the cheapest? I'll buy that. And unfortunately with accountants, because they're analytical and that's the way they think that it's often hard for them to

Kevin Rapp (17:33.859)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (17:47.757)
Exactly.

Christian Brim (17:58.034)
move into that space of really understanding, getting to know the customer and understanding what business problem they're trying to solve. But it translates across all these industries. And I think the entrepreneurs in these professional services really have to get out of that skills, skill mode. They got to get out of that space.

Kevin Rapp (18:24.322)
Yes. To bring that back to a place of creative, know, so many websites of creative studios or freelancers often sound the same. Right. You can go to a lot of different websites and you'll see we're award winning storytellers that are passionate about our craft. Right. Like we could probably write the agency bio like right here and you'd see it in

Christian Brim (18:37.729)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (18:43.222)
Right. Right.

Kevin Rapp (18:54.24)
a hundred different studios that almost word for word the same language. But storytelling isn't inherently valuable. Right? It's not. But we're so convinced that it is because it's the thing that we care about. It's the thing that we, it's what got us into the industry in the first place because we want to tell stories. But storytelling is valuable. You just have to figure out how

Christian Brim (18:56.076)
Right.

Kevin Rapp (19:23.914)
it connects to value. Like for example, do you understand the unique storytelling mechanisms that are required for social media in order to stop the scroll and keep people's attention past the skip ad button? Because that is valuable. The

Christian Brim (19:26.412)
Right.

Christian Brim (19:40.874)
Yes. And I'd even say what story are you telling? Right. Because that, that is, is it a story somebody wants to read?

Kevin Rapp (19:45.326)
CREPT

Kevin Rapp (19:50.436)
That's right, yes, yeah. Knowing the right story to tell and knowing the right levers to pull in that story in order to alter the behavior of your audience, that is value. That is something that leads to tangible business impact. And I think so many of us get hung up on our contribution that we don't follow the thread

Christian Brim (19:56.002)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (20:03.895)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (20:19.776)
of how that contribution leads to tangible value. And that is the line that you need to be able to draw in order to be able to properly communicate who you are and what you do.

Christian Brim (20:35.158)
Yes. Okay, so I didn't quite get the answer. Well, I think I cut you off. So go ahead and finish the story.

Kevin Rapp (20:40.32)
No. Yeah. So that was probably the biggest realization of my career is understanding the value of what I did. And for a while, my thinking was, wow, I've built a really great department inside an insurance company, right? I built a video department from the ground up. And then eventually I started to measure the impact of what I did.

Christian Brim (20:50.178)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rapp (21:10.12)
And I started looking at the systems that I had built in the company. I'd started to look at, you know, how I'd built inefficiencies. And I started to like assign dollar values to what I did. And after doing some math, I came to the realization that in cost savings, I was saving the company $5 million a year in production costs. Just by counting like how I was building things. And then I would look at the backend and go, we're also creating.

hundreds of millions of dollars in value. And so I started to realize I didn't just make a really great department. I built a business model for how creative can impact companies. And there are a lot of other companies like this out here. And so I started to market myself and what I was doing. And I didn't know at first what that was going to look like.

Christian Brim (21:49.612)
Yes you did.

Christian Brim (21:53.632)
Yes, you did.

Kevin Rapp (22:08.94)
may have been consulting, may have been, eventually I'll get another full-time gig. I didn't know what that was going to look like, but I started to market the impact of what I was doing and how I think about the work a little differently. And people just started coming to me and started to ask me to help them and said like, hey, we want what you did there for us. And from there, it just kind of continued to scale. It was just this,

Christian Brim (22:33.036)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rapp (22:39.37)
me posting on LinkedIn every once in a while that eventually snowballed into building an agency.

Christian Brim (22:48.8)
Now how long ago was this that you started UltraFriends? Okay, and did you start out at the outset with a partner or?

Kevin Rapp (22:51.726)
two and a half years ago.

Kevin Rapp (22:57.804)
No, was just me at first because I kind of quit my job without a plan. And I just started posting on LinkedIn saying, okay, I'm gonna start figuring out what I'm gonna do. And I got my first couple of clients pretty quickly. And that gave me the opportunity to have some space to really investigate what I wanted to do. And...

I found that I was really enjoying doing my own thing, which is, I mean, I was a lifetime nine to fiver before that. I had worked full-time jobs for 16 years before I did my very first going out on my own. So this was, as a notoriously very risk averse person, this was something that I was very, very, very nervous about.

Christian Brim (23:41.122)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (23:48.802)
What helped you bridge that gap from employee to, as I like the phrase, the check cashier to the check signer.

Kevin Rapp (24:02.626)
I think seeing the response that I got and being able to close a couple of clients even before I left my full-time job just gave me that, you're gonna be okay. I had started to really understand my value when I worked in-house and got to really see the impact of what I was doing. And this gave me that validation of like, no,

Christian Brim (24:05.943)
you

Christian Brim (24:16.278)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Rapp (24:32.26)
You're right. You are worth more than you gave yourself credit for. And betting on yourself right now is the right bet to make.

Christian Brim (24:45.334)
gonna put a pin in that statement right there. So finish, finish, how did you end up with a partner and what was...

Kevin Rapp (24:50.594)
Yeah. So, my business partner is actually the former chief creative officer at Root. He's the guy who hired me in the first place and he and I just became very, very, very good friends over the time. And he went off and did other things while I was starting to do my own thing. And we always talked about, you know, eventually it'd be great to put the band back together and get the two of us back together working, working, together again.

Christian Brim (24:59.179)
Okay.

Kevin Rapp (25:19.852)
And eventually he got into the right circumstances where it's like, the timing is kind of right for me to at least give this a try. And so this was about a year ago that the two of us, visually combined forces and changed what was Kevin rap consulting into ultra friends.

Christian Brim (25:41.25)
Do you segregate your responsibilities? Is there a synergy that comes with what you do?

Kevin Rapp (25:52.482)
Yeah, there's there's great collaborative overlap in in what we do. My background is more in video production and marketing work, and his background is in UX design. So he's done a lot of website design and app product design. So he has more of a product background and we both obviously have a lot of overlap in brand and have both done marketing and product. So there's there's lots of overlap there, but we have

Christian Brim (26:06.198)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rapp (26:22.52)
different perspectives that have nice harmony. And so we're able to lead different initiatives, but we offer kind of a well-rounded package together.

Christian Brim (26:37.292)
So I want to go back to the pin. You said understanding the value that you created gave you the confidence to, paraphrasing, to go and start your own. I think that a lot of creatives that may be contemplating starting their own businesses, and maybe some that are in business for themselves struggle with that.

Kevin Rapp (26:47.192)
Yes. Yeah.

Kevin Rapp (27:05.506)
Right. Yeah.

Christian Brim (27:06.868)
Like, I, I go back to, know, when I, when I did interviews for my book, profit first for creatives, I, I, I saw this underlying theme that there, there was this devaluation of creativity by, by, the individuals, not like externally they were, but, but I think some of it is external.

Kevin Rapp (27:27.79)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (27:34.02)
I think it's both.

Christian Brim (27:36.384)
Well, talk about it. Tell me what your thoughts are.

Kevin Rapp (27:38.242)
Yeah. So I think that there are systemic factors that devalue creative. I mean, we see it in the industry all the time. There are so many agencies that pitch for free in order to win business, right?

Christian Brim (27:53.314)
Get that exposure as you posted on LinkedIn today.

Kevin Rapp (27:58.18)
exposure bucks, right? People are paid in exposure bucks. People pitch in order to win business. when I think about those types of pitches, the concept that resonates with an audience and motivates them to make behavior change is the most valuable thing that we have to offer. And when we pitch for free and offer up

Christian Brim (28:00.608)
Yeah, uh-huh.

Christian Brim (28:19.804)
Yeah.

Kevin Rapp (28:24.196)
the most valuable thing that we have to offer for $0, of course, we're devaluing creative.

Christian Brim (28:33.034)
Yes. And, and I will say that one changing behavior, changing human behavior is the single most valuable thing you can do in business. I will, I will, I will reiterate that, because human behavior is, irrational and, and understanding that

Kevin Rapp (28:45.901)
Absolutely.

Kevin Rapp (28:56.684)
incredibly irrational.

Christian Brim (29:01.62)
that complexity is something that only another human can do. There's no technology that can replace it, right? Because even if you're really good at it, you might only figure it out 50 % of the time. I don't know, I pulled that number out of my ass, but like, right?

Kevin Rapp (29:16.644)
Absolutely, yeah, not everything is gonna be a win, right? It's, human behavior is really messy. We make decisions emotionally and then rationalize it with logic, right? That's how humans make decisions. And...

Christian Brim (29:22.697)
Right.

Christian Brim (29:31.298)
Exactly. That's 100 % right. Right. But then, but then going back to your exposure bucks, it's, you know, I, I'm kind of a, a, I don't know, quasi student of pricing. just find the concepts fascinating and pricing, but, but I can tell you one thing that if you don't charge, you automatically devalue what you do. I mean, no one can see value for what they do not pay for. I mean, it's,

That's just an axiom. It does not change.

Kevin Rapp (30:04.308)
It does not change. And I think when you're setting off the relationship with that as your very first impression, of course, they are not going to value you as an equal partner. You are setting that relationship off in a way with a very mismatched power dynamic, which is how I think a lot of us get stuck in the trap of being order takers because they don't truly value us as equals.

Christian Brim (30:13.036)
Right.

Christian Brim (30:29.046)
Yes.

Christian Brim (30:33.94)
which is not the space where you deliver your most value as an order taker and producing whatever it is that the patient says they want, right? Your real value is as the physician to say, this is your real problem.

Kevin Rapp (30:34.026)
and

Kevin Rapp (30:42.212)
Absolutely.

Kevin Rapp (30:47.096)
Yes. So that's how I think systemically there are factors that devalue creative. And then I think we as creatives internalize that external devaluation and devaluate ourselves because we are people who build a large portion of our identity from our work because we are passionate about it.

Christian Brim (31:14.657)
going to...

Kevin Rapp (31:17.016)
because we love it and because it is a huge part of who we are. And so when we tell ourselves that we are worth less in terms of pitching for free, in terms of working for exposure bucks, when we say we are worth X dollar amount, we are telling ourselves not just as workers, not just as employees, not just as artists, but as people, we are worth

Christian Brim (31:17.986)
Yeah.

Kevin Rapp (31:47.648)
less and that trickles in to every aspect of our professional lives and personal lives.

Christian Brim (31:49.483)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (31:58.594)
We could do a whole other episode on that. No, I think about my daughter is a, what does she call herself? Figurative oil painter. I think that's the correct term. And I had her on the show and we had this discussion, but I remember she had several years ago,

Kevin Rapp (32:13.396)
Mm. Yeah.

Christian Brim (32:25.684)
A painting that she had posted and it went viral on Tik TOK. And at that time she was selling prints and she got so overwhelmed with orders. And I was like, you know what you, you know, turn it off. Like if you can't meet the demand, right. But, but the fascinating thing was, and the salient point here is that she got a lot of negative feedback.

on tech talk from what she'd posted as well. And I told her, said, well, you know, as her father, not as a business advisor, it was, well, you, you know, if you're going to play in that realm, you're going to get both. Right. And you either have to absorb all of it or ignore all of it. You can't, you can't pick and choose. Right. You, you, so, but it is deeply personal. Right. And.

Kevin Rapp (33:11.428)
Absolutely.

Kevin Rapp (33:15.416)
Yep. Yep.

Kevin Rapp (33:23.725)
Incredibly.

Christian Brim (33:24.834)
And that's what I really wish we had time to dive into the personal aspect of it. But I want to stick on the business for now. as we we were, yes, we can have you back on the show. the compelling thing I was thinking of is what about, I'm just going to throw this idea out here.

Kevin Rapp (33:36.46)
Okay, but part two, there's always part two.

Christian Brim (33:53.922)
What about a marketing agency to marketing agencies? because, right, because the thing is I'm thinking here is that marketers don't even really understand.

Kevin Rapp (33:58.072)
I mean, it's so needed.

Christian Brim (34:13.332)
what their real value is and how to communicate that to their customers, right? Or potential customers. What do you think of that? Are you gonna start a business with me? Shall we start a?

Kevin Rapp (34:18.468)
That's right. That's right. I think that.

You know, I, it has been something that's been on my mind, honestly, because the thing that, I mean, I love what I do. I love helping brands, but the thing that I get really, really fired up about is helping creatives and other business owners unlock things in themselves and recognizes the superpowers that they don't even realize they have. It's, it's something that

came far too late in my career. Like I shouldn't have been 20 years in my career before I recognized what my value was, right? Like I really should not have been that far along to truly understand why what I do is powerful. But it took me a long time because we're not good at teaching it as an industry. We're not good at teaching why what we do is impactful. We are great at teaching how to improve the craft.

Christian Brim (34:59.458)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (35:12.374)
Yeah.

Kevin Rapp (35:21.528)
We are great at teaching how to build better pitches. We're great at teaching metrics that don't truly move the needle for the business. Like they do incrementally, but they're not the real things that help move the business forward. so there is a real desire in me to help creatives understand why they

Christian Brim (35:42.145)
Right.

Kevin Rapp (35:51.4)
are as important as they are because every cultural and business foundation is built off the backs of creative contributions.

Christian Brim (36:02.754)
And I I'll go a step further that.

think one of the structural problems is that creatives are different. They think differently. They communicate differently. And a lot of times the non- and I don't want to say non-creatives because I think everybody's creative. But the people that don't, the rest of the world, we'll just call them that, have a hard time understanding what it is

Kevin Rapp (36:22.329)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (36:28.354)
Everyone's creative. Yeah.

Kevin Rapp (36:38.339)
Yes.

Christian Brim (36:40.502)
that you're doing saying like, know, it's, and so it's easy to, for that to break down and, and, you know, just give me, just give, I'm just thinking of my own experience in my own business and my, and my own marketing director. Like, I've worked with her for three years and, having conversations is structurally difficult because we, we think and communicate different.

Kevin Rapp (36:49.006)
There is.

Christian Brim (37:08.958)
There's not a straight line in her brain, right? My favorite example of that is I asked her at the beginning to give me a spreadsheet and she gave me a spreadsheet and I'm like, what the fuck is this? Like, this is not a spreadsheet, right? But it just highlighted this fact that we think fundamentally differently.

Kevin Rapp (37:25.028)
You

Kevin Rapp (37:36.824)
Yes.

Christian Brim (37:39.142)
It's hard for us that aren't in that space to really engage with creatives and properly utilize them.

Kevin Rapp (37:48.568)
It is. Yeah. And that leads to a siloing where creative is kind of offset from the business realities. And that's what leads to marketers saying, okay, we're going to make you this very prescriptive brief of what we want. And then we're going to give it to you creative folks to do your magic thing, to make this work. And then the creatives.

Christian Brim (38:09.612)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (38:18.592)
Might have a problem where they look at this paper and go, this doesn't make any damn sense. Like this isn't going to give them what they actually want, but they don't have the language to communicate that back. And so there's this breakdown in communication where the creatives just go, okay, we're going to try and make this work. And they're fighting an uphill battle and maybe it looks really pretty, but it doesn't solve the real problem. Because we're not able to have that back and forth.

Christian Brim (38:23.713)
Right.

Christian Brim (38:42.347)
Yeah, and you...

Right. And, what we've, what we've done in, in even giving you a brief, conceptually, what we've done is we've already put restraints on you and as opposed to saying, well, this is, this is the objective we're trying to achieve. What figure it out? Like what, what's

Kevin Rapp (38:56.484)
100%. Yeah.

Christian Brim (39:10.099)
Excuse me.

Kevin Rapp (39:11.97)
Yeah, it's something that's really powerful when you have a great dynamic where you have business owners that say, hey, we know what we want to achieve. We know what we're trying to accomplish, but we don't exactly know the tactical ways to achieve that. Can you help us? That's something that takes time and trust. But when you get into those,

Christian Brim (39:38.402)
Well, yeah. Yeah. Cause I'm thinking as a business owner, well, if I, if I throw this problem to you and, there's a substantial chance that you're not going to figure it out the first time or the second time, right? That that's a risky thing. Like I, but the, the, to me that, that the potential solution is worth the risk.

Kevin Rapp (39:54.244)
That's right. That's right.

It is.

Christian Brim (40:08.736)
because the alternative is just that incremental changes that you're talking about, which we know aren't gonna really move the needle much.

Kevin Rapp (40:10.361)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (40:15.726)
That's right.

Kevin Rapp (40:19.46)
That's right, exactly. They'll get you those small little incremental wins that you can be like, yay, we did this by like 0.5%. And it's like, cool, that's great. But if you want true innovative change, you absolutely need to trust your partners. And the way that I help facilitate those conversations is that I've stopped using language like concept when I'm telling people what I want.

Christian Brim (40:27.531)
Right.

Kevin Rapp (40:48.802)
Because to me, a concept feels really rigid. It feels very like, it feels like I'm trying to sell you this idea is going to do magic for you. And so what I present.

Christian Brim (40:52.428)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (40:59.252)
Well, see concept to me sounds ambiguous, but go ahead. mean, like that's fascinating that you think it's restrictive, but I would perceive it if you told me concept is like, that seems nebulous, but go ahead.

Kevin Rapp (41:13.07)
So I mean that in the sense of when I am presenting a pitch or when I was presenting pitches at studios before, we would say, here's concept one, two, and three. Here's why concept one is the exact right solution to your problem. Here's why concept two could also maybe be the right solution to the problem. And here's also why concept three might probably be the right solution to your problem. It's the safe one, right? Like, so to me, they feel very,

Christian Brim (41:29.099)
I see.

Christian Brim (41:41.376)
Yeah.

Kevin Rapp (41:43.214)
They feel very salesy because that's the structure that we were always pitching them in. And that's why I think they feel rigid. And so I have shifted my language to when I present new ideas to my clients, I pitch hypotheses. I say, this is my hypothesis of what I think is going to perform. And here's why I think it's going to perform. And here are the variables that I'd like to test. And here's what I'd like to learn.

Christian Brim (41:45.406)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (41:58.786)
Mmm.

Kevin Rapp (42:12.536)
from the experiment of putting this creative out into the market. That to me opens up a different kind of conversation where it's no longer, okay, which is your favorite of concepts one, two or three? It now opens up the possibilities of which do you think is the most reasonable hypothesis to test? And what would you like to start with? It's no longer one, two or three is the right answer. It is, you know what?

Christian Brim (42:17.431)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (42:38.539)
Yeah, okay.

Kevin Rapp (42:39.456)
One might be the answer, two might be the answer, three might be the answer, and I might have up to 10 hypotheses that I'm going to present to you, and it's now, what do you want to try first? And then we have a ton of fertile ground that if that doesn't work, there are other potential solutions to this problem that we have been thinking about and have opportunities to explore.

Christian Brim (42:45.078)
Right.

Christian Brim (43:03.862)
Well, and essentially what you're talking about that there is divergent thinking as opposed to convergent thinking. as, as, as business owners, you, you don't really want a divergent answer. You want an answer, right? You want everything to come together into one answer.

Kevin Rapp (43:19.064)
Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, like to say there is only one potential solution to this problem is just unrealistic. There are so many different potential solutions to increase customer, you know, increase customer acquisitions, right? There's a million different ways to approach that. And so to present a couple of different ways to think about it. And I like in it to, you know, the scientific method, right? That I have a hypothesis. I'd like to test and validate it.

Christian Brim (43:37.846)
Yes.

Kevin Rapp (43:50.798)
Here's our control, here's our variable so that we can get some real learnings behind it. And so at the end of the day, a lot of the times the most valuable thing isn't just the results. A lot of the time, what you learn from the test can be the most valuable thing that you get out of investing in creative.

Christian Brim (44:08.352)
Yes.

Christian Brim (44:15.148)
There's a fascinating book. Do I have a copy of it? I recommend you read it. It is called Greatness Cannot Be Planned. And I read it. It's written by a computer scientist. And it's one of the very first books on AI. I think it's 20 years old. And he walks through why

you, you, if your objective is X that that planned approach to achieving X is, is actually counterproductive from a computer language AI standpoint. And that if you think about all of the great things that have been discovered,

they all took a very unpredictable path to get there. Like the computer was one of his examples. And he said, well, in order for the first computer to be created, there had to be vacuum tubes. The vacuum tubes weren't created with the intent of creating a computer. They were created to do testing in labs. I don't know why they made them, but.

Kevin Rapp (45:31.204)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rapp (45:34.937)
That's right.

Christian Brim (45:41.154)
And there were several steps along the way that like if you said, build me a computer. You would never have gotten there because you hadn't discovered what you didn't know beforehand. And that's what you're describing.

Kevin Rapp (45:56.836)
Absolutely.

Kevin Rapp (46:00.396)
Yeah, it's absolutely using creative thinking to find the right set of components to build a solution to a business problem, right? It's, it's, one of the things that we did is when I was working in house, I started looking at one of the problems that we had, which was that marketing was always

Christian Brim (46:12.855)
Yeah.

Kevin Rapp (46:27.87)
having or creative was always having to be reactive to marketing. Marketing would make a request. Creative would build something for scratch every single time. And so we were putting tremendous amounts of effort into every single piece of creative because we just kind of waited for marketing to tell us what they needed. And so I started looking at this and saying, what if I just started making a bunch of components and just started making a bunch of

Christian Brim (46:32.674)
Mmm.

Kevin Rapp (46:57.664)
evergreen assets that they could then say, we have this new initiative. And I could say, great, here are five different options. Pull the one off the shelf that you think is the best suited for this. Right. And so I started building all these libraries of assets proactively. So whenever we had downtime, we were starting to add to our inventory. We were building 3d illustrations. We were building animations. We were building, you know, all sorts of different pieces of content so that we were

Christian Brim (47:07.787)
Right.

Christian Brim (47:18.262)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rapp (47:27.108)
proactively building a library and an inventory that all of our teams could utilize. And that's how we got to this savings factor because we were proactively solving big business problems.

Christian Brim (47:39.532)
Right.

Kevin, we're definitely going to have to have you back on the show because we have more that we need to dig into. How do people find you if they want to learn more about Ultra Friends?

Kevin Rapp (47:45.294)
Okay, okay, we can do that.

Kevin Rapp (47:51.204)
Yeah. Yeah. If the best place to find me is on LinkedIn, I'm usually posting there like every weekday. So you'll, you'll see me drop in little nuggets and also references to the X-Men and any random thing that's on my brain at that particular moment. So that's probably the best place to see more. you are interested in hearing more of the Yammer.

Christian Brim (48:20.212)
We'll we'll drop that link in the show notes. Kevin, thank you very much for your experience here and your insights. Listeners, if you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. I'm not even going to ask you to tell me if you didn't like it, because if you didn't like it, you're on the wrong show, because this was this was awesome. Until then, ta ta for now.