00:26 Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Growth is Scaling podcast. Today, we are so lucky to have Billee with us. Billee, will you please tell us who you are and what do you do?

00:36 So good to be here, Todd. I am Billee Howard. I'm the co-founder and CEO of a company called Brandthro. We are an agile emotional intelligence company. Our mission is to really update outdated means of customer understanding by using a mix of data science, AI, and what we feel is most critical to the future of AI, which is direct human response or direct human emotional response. Yeah, our data science was actually validated and proven out on Wall Street. Our head of data science, he was a city, he was a data architect at Citi and he figured out that using a hundred data points, he could predict market movement and where the market was headed. And when we were fortunate enough to meet, he said, you know, I can't think of anything that would be more akin to the market movement than emotion. And we've applied that same math to create our proprietary emotional scoring, which really helps brands and really any type of organization, better understand their customers through the lens of emotional lookalikes, as opposed to just demographic information, as well as primary and secondary emotional scores to different parts of a brand experience and how those experiences are brought to life.

01:59 Okay, that's a lot to unpack there. So back up one second. So through what means are you gathering the data to interpret emotional behavior from these leads?

02:13 Well, basically what we do with our clients is we figure out exactly who it is they want to reach. And, you know, when you look at existing demographic data, it's often not representative of what the population looks like today, let alone acts that could can enact as a true proxy of who the customer is. So we develop a very precise screener process. We have a proprietary survey instrument that goes out and acquires the data. We have a data acquisition partner that helps us build these micro segments. And because we only need 100 data points, we're able to be predictive of a population. So people are literally selecting as many primary or secondary emotional responses as they want to different component parts of the journey, which are tied directly to specific KPIs. And they're also doing the same thing for pieces of language, content, logos, colors, so on and so forth.

03:08 Interesting, that's crazy. So these are surveys or are you pulling it from interaction on websites or how are you pulling the data?

03:17 It's an online survey experience, but because it's not percentages or statistics, you know, it's really, think about the survey as an instrument as opposed to what you may think of a traditional survey as in the past.

03:32 Okay. So if I'm your client, what are you gonna do for me? You're gonna come in and provide some type of application or some type of thing that I want to know about people coming to my site? Or how does this work for me as a client?

03:44 Well, the use cases are limitless. I mean, what's unique about what we do is we've tied emotion to KPIs. We think about emotion as the most critical currency that's going to be driving business forward. Just as we saw creativity emerge and do that about a decade ago, I happen to have written a book about that concept called WeCommerce, that those companies who invested in creativity as a function and driver of strategy would outperform those who did not. And McKinsey actually did a study several years after my book came out and proved that companies in the S&P 500 who did just that, invest in creativity, did outperform their peers. So the notion of going into a client and saying, what is a business problem that you're trying to solve? And how can we use emotion as this new X factor of driving employee engagement, developing deeper loyalty, solving for customer acquisition, understanding how to innovate in advance of what your customers want. That's exactly how we're using emotion to drive towards improved business outcomes, as opposed to how people thought about emotion in the past, which is much more two functions. One, let me tell you how I feel after you spend millions and millions of dollars on creating this experience, either via an emoji in my social media, or through sentiment analysis, it's not really that helpful. But better yet, how can I get into the customer mindset as early as possible and understand how people are feeling so I can use it as a solve for a better business output?

05:19 This is super relevant. I mean, for those of you listening to this, if you're not trying to ask these9  questions regularly about your client avatar, you're really, really missing probably a lot of money on the table. And I think that what you're doing is fantastic. I literally yesterday was with my copywriter for a few hours discussing this exact thing. What is the emotional trigger? Well, what is the thing we need to do to trigger the emotional response? And we need to get them to take this call to action. And it sounds like you're able to do this through a very sophisticated routine. What exactly, I mean, give us some ideas of some different use cases and maybe some examples of how you've been able to execute this for your clients.

06:03 I mean, the use cases are limitless. We just worked with a major consulting firm who wanted to figure out how to imagine the future of work against the LGBTQ cohort. And we wanted to, instead of looking at that cohort as one monolith, we broke it up into the L, the G, the B, the T, and the Q. So we looked at them as individual promotional profiles or emotional lookalikes. And then we did same thing by creating emotional lookalikes of Fortune 1000 CEOs. And out of that, we were able to create a blueprint emotionally for where CEOs and that cohort, what did they have in common about imagining the future of work, which very encouragingly and surprisingly was, they were on the same page. Everybody wants to move towards a better tomorrow. But the real differences lied in two key areas. One was how quickly that change could be actuated. Right? CEO is much more measured in their approach. The cohort obviously wants them to change more quickly. But really what it came down to as well was fundamentally a lack of understanding about some of the nuances, particularly related to benefits and having that, the cohort being seen as they want to identify. But, you know, coming up with a plan for an organization to operationalize how they're going to build the future of their organization.Compelling, totally other type of use case. We had a major alcohol brand come to us. They wanted to, it was a vodka brand. They wanted to understand why people were not drinking as much vodka. They wanted to redo their brand purpose. They wanted a better engaged Hispanics and blacks on premise. We injected emotion into the process and when they had a 27% increase in sales and a 47% increase by the two populations that I mentioned. So it's all about using emotion. But again, not about this, let me make you cry in a commercial, although that's still important, but more so how can I make you feel every single day in a way that you value so that you wanna have a relationship with me, not just a transaction.

08:15 Fantastic. I get it. And this is powerful. And for those of you listening, you really need to check out what she's doing. I have links to her company down below in the show notes. Check it out. It is very, very cool stuff. And honestly, I think it's just amazing. It's super powerful. And you're utilizing all the modern tools to help make it happen faster, which is awesome. Billie, tell us now about your business. We want to know about your growth. How has this come along? I mean, it doesn't all happen all at once with a business like this. What did it look like in the beginning and what are some decisions you had to make along the way to kind of get yourself to A, profitability, and B, clients that trusted that this process would work?

09:05 Couple of critical learnings along the way. You know, I mentioned earlier that I had written a book and in doing so I had stepped away from I worked at Bain Big Agency life for the majority of my career. And I wrote the book and I was doing some consulting and speaking. And I had a life changing moment that, you know, it scared the crap out of me to be quite frank. IBM approached me. And they asked me to be a futurist for them. And I wasn't afraid to be a futurist, but I was afraid to be a futurist about introducing Watson and AI to CMOs because at the time I had absolutely no idea what AI really was about. And they asked me to do a keynote and I was terrified. But I threw myself into the deep end and it changed my life because it was at that conference that I realized that I could take the power of technology to not replace myself or replace what we do marketers, but learn how to use it in a way that would make us better, stronger and faster. And I think that the takeaway there is you have to push past fear. If you're ever in a place of complacency, you're never going to get to the next level. The other thing I would say is, you know, you have to have the courage to fail. I mean, we had to fail forward many, many times to be able to get to where we are today. And you know, success is measured. It takes failure. It takes disruption. And it takes, quite frankly, especially if you're an entrepreneur, the appetite and ability to be told no over and over and over again, but learn from it. Believe in what your vision is, because only through the rigor of trial and innovation as a process can you really get to the levels that you imagine success to look for.

10:54 captainscouncil.com

12:23 Totally agree, totally agree. So what does that look like? I mean, it sounds like you did this project for IBM. You keynoted at the launch of something you didn't fully understand. When you dove in and started figuring out what this really meant, what kind of emotional response did it trigger for you? I mean, marketers are always trying to trigger emotion. What did it do for you? And how did you capture that in a bottle and put it into a product?

12:48 Well, what excited me most is, you know, I was, as I said, in marketing and communications and C-suite advisory for many years in the first part of my career, but I kind of reached a threshold of how far I could go when I was about 35 years old. And that was extremely sad and frustrating because I loved what I did, but then I was like, where am I going next? And I, at my core, I've always been an entrepreneur, but I wasn't exactly sure of what to do when I was presented with the idea of building a technology company from scratch, predicated on what I do best, and then ultimately have brought along with me people that I have met along the way who are the best at what they do in our space. You know, it's been a very, very rewarding experience because it's like, you know, growing together with people, you know, respect and the team has gotten bigger and bigger. We're still, you know, a finite group because we are a startup, but we have been profitable for the last three years. We're totally self-funded to date and we're finally at the point of going to our next phase, which is not direct to brand through a software as a service product, but really becoming emotional or API plugin, if you will, to any stack, so that emotionally brought to scale.

14:12 Interesting.

14:13  So, that emotionally brought to scale.

14:14 Interesting. That's a smart play. It's a really smart play. And Billee, I mean, the math is not adding up for me though. You said that this happened when you were 35 and being at 37, how could you have been doing this for this long? Anyway, well,   

14:31 No, I didn't say that. I said I reached a threshold at 35, figured out, it took me a while to figure out what I was going to do. And I made the pivot to write the book probably six, seven years ago. And then we started the company maybe four years ago. Does it add up now?

14:58 No, you're awesome, you're awesome. Thanks for playing with me. No, here's the thing. The funnest part about what you just described is that you have taken a career of advisory and marketing and strategy, and now you discover something that you were a little bit nervous about, but discover something that can be completely utilized by so many people out there. So many companies and brands need to know, not just the demographics anymore, they need to know what's going to trigger a response from the people they want to get a response from. And I think that what you're talking about is a sounds like an amazing solution for people like me who yesterday was having this conversation with my team. How do we trigger a better emotional response? And how do we get this to happen? So at engagement with you, what does this look like? I mean, you're talking about an API plugin potentially, you're talking about like. What is it looking forward going to mean for you to engage with the client?

15:56 We're always going to have our direct to brand business because at our core, you know, at least myself and a couple of my partners, we love to work with brands and we love to solve problems. And what's been most exciting as of late is we've actually had a lot of not-for-profit organizations come to us to solve very meaningful problems related to using emotion against all of the inequity that's going on in the world. So while we want that to be 5% of our business. We have a very clear runway for growth of doing exactly what you just said, which is being a plugin for stacks, whether it's for agencies, whether it's for call centers, whether it's for hopefully in a future environment as we get smarter, a programmatic environment, which will hopefully remove a lot of the unconscious bias that exists with AI alone and make better experiences for people, reimagine the media business. You know, we have a lot of aspirations that can only happen if we are, uh, you know, a complete API plugin, which is where we are right now. And we're in the middle of, you know, rolling out a lot of trials to see how that's going to work.

17:04 Crazy. So as you look at what you're, the position you're in right now, and making that transition from being an in-person, you know, B2B type solution, and, you know, consultative, I guess you could say, and bringing these solutions to companies, going into that next phase, what kind of challenges have you had thus far, and what do you foresee kind of being some of the bigger hurdles you gotta leap over?

17:28 You know, it's always a chicken and egg thing, right? So when you're thinking about taking on funding, you wanna make the choice of the right partner, but you also wanna make sure that the right partner chooses you. And sometimes in order to get funding that you need, you need to demonstrate growth that you can't possibly demonstrate without somebody taking a chance on you. So fortunately, we have a lot of long contacts that I've known and we've known as a team for a while who I'm confident will give us you know, the cash reserves that we need to get to the scale that we want. The other thing obviously is we're changing, we're changing an entire paradigm. So you need early adopters. Fortunately, we've been blessed to have a lot of very big name Lighthouse clients who have come along on this journey with us, but after early adopters, you need to make that leap to mainstream adoption. And what we're hoping is that when we're an ingredient, that gets plugged into a stack that's just going to use emotion to make experiences better for everyone, it'll become much more widely used, accessible, and adoptable.

18:34 For sure, for sure. No doubt about it, that is the solution. I mean, that is the process that everyone needs to be thinking about. And for those listening, pay attention to what Billee's doing here and what she's describing, because I talk a lot about, a lot of people talk about launching, not a lot of people talk about what to do next. And Billee has been around the block. She's seen this happen with other clients and people that she's worked with. And now that you're executing this, Billee, What advice do you have for other people who maybe don't know like, okay, how much do I discount for, you know, for these initial, uh, clients who want to test and utilize my product and what should I commit to them? When should I do it for free? And when do I do it for just a discount? I think these are questions a lot of people have. What is your strategy going to be?

19:22 Well, we're always willing to invest in ourselves, right? So if someone's gonna open the door and give us an opportunity to shine, there's never an opportunity that we're not gonna crush it out of the park. And I think that not enough people knock on enough doors to get to a yes. Any person that you know who's extremely successful, whether it's Steve Jobs who was fired many times before he got Apple right or many, many entrepreneurs who are extremely successful today, they didn't get to be successful by doing it for a day or a week or a year. The gentleman who created Peloton, I believe the story is that he ran out of money a couple of weeks before Peloton blew up into what it is today. So, you've got to hang on. And you have to.

20:07 Is that right?

20:08  I believe so. And you have to believe. You have to believe in yourself. And the other thing I think people sometimes don't do is they're not transparent. People respect authenticity and they respect when you're honest. And if you're honest, when you say where you're at and where you want to be and you want to partner with someone to get to from point A to point B, that's a much more respectable place to be than saying you have all of this experience and you don't.

20:37 Totally, totally. Fake it till you make it doesn't always work. And I think that you're exactly right. That was a common strategy back in the day. And now that we actually need, those initial clients need to be good feedback partners too. They need to be able to feel like, okay, I know I'm really in the game with you. Let me tell you what I've liked so far and what is driving me nuts. And those are the types of clients you really want to adopt early on in any venture. Don't you think?

21:08 You hit the nail on the head. You crushed it, actually. I mean, we have seen the best growth in the company, obviously because we've reached a certain maturation point. But we brought on a chief customer officer a little over a year ago. And having somebody be the voice of the customer and get the feedback and really understand how we can refine and innovate in real time against a need set, as opposed to what we imagine that people should want, as opposed to what clients need has made an immeasurable difference and I think your point is an excellent one.

21:42 Thank you. I totally respect that and that's what you're doing right now. And I hope that it translates well to the audience because really every client launches sometimes with just a bunch of random products just to get them off the ground. They gotta get off the ground, gotta get some cashflow going. But when it comes right down to it, I think that the position you're in is very similar to a lot of people. Whereas like we're cash flowing, we've been bootstrapped. We're not beholden to anyone, but now we're really trying to strip away the stuff we don't like doing and push forward the initiative that we think we wanna just keep doing, wake up every day excited to do moving forward. Is that kind of where you're at?

22:26 Yeah, well, you know, when you strip away everything, yeah, it's a really exciting place to be because, you know, as I said, it's not easy. It's not easy being an entrepreneur, but when you're able to be driven by a passion and a belief that what you're doing is right with the right people, you know, I feel very lucky that I get up, I get to wake up and do that every day. Cause I know a lot of people who wake up and hate what they do. So,

22:53 Especially entrepreneurs. It shocks me how many people wake up every day and say, oh, gotta go deal with the headache. What is the headache? They create it. They can change it if they wanted to. So, Billee, you're a smart woman. You've got, I have to imagine you've surrounded yourself with some very good people, not only on your team, but people that give you good advice. What is a group, is there a person that you look to for mentorship or someone to bounce ideas off of that's kind of helped you get to this point in the journey?

23:31 I've been fortunate enough to have a handful of female mentors. And when I say a handful, I'm saying maybe two, maybe three. Unfortunately, women sometimes aren't as supportive of other women in tech and beyond. But my first boss always rewarded people, especially me, from other women. As a meritocracy, it wasn't confined to a period of time or what the percentage should be. I went above and beyond and I rewarded above and beyond. And that's why I was able to ascend the ranks as quickly as I did because I deserved to. And she didn't care that I was 25 as opposed to 40. So that's something that I've always with me. I reward people for how hard they work. Another mentor of mine has always taught me to, you know, it's hard to not give up. It's hard to. To have the courage to believe in yourself outside the confines of a traditional corporate structure, which most of us, you know, especially the, my mentors only had that as an option and they have still encouraged me to. Step out and go on my own because they believe in me. You know, and just having female support and camaraderie in addition to all of the men who have helped me along the way. Yeah, it's unfortunately, sometimes it's more unusual women helping women, but hopefully that's changing.

25:04 That is interesting. That's interesting. Now I didn't hear a name on either one of these two mentors. Are they non-shout-addable?

25:11 Diane Perry is the first one and Maureen Mitchells is the second one.

25:18 Diane, Maureen, thank you. Thank you for encouraging Billee. I, there's something about Hear Your Name on anything online that just does bring a power. And Billee, thanks for giving them the shout out. And especially you women who have been able to work together to build each other up. I love it. I think it's fascinating. I've had three daughters of my own and I look forward to what, seeing what they become in the future. And I'm so grateful that you've been able to build and grow your business to where you're at today. So Billee, way to go. Thanks for being an example. I can't wait to see what your company does here in the next few years, and how you're able to tap into the multitude of potential clients through a plugin API, or however you end up doing it. It's exciting, can't wait to watch this.

26:02 Thank you so much for your support and for being such a lovely host and having me on. It's been wonderful to talk to you, Todd. Really appreciate it.

26:10 Thank you. And to all you listening, listen to this twice if you need to. Check out the next episode as well. So glad you're here.. Hey, how'd that go?

26:19 Take care.

26:20 Thanks,Billee, you're awesome