Adam Torres and Jennifer Sutton discuss social media marketing.
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Show Notes:
Bright+CO is a full-service marketing and advertising agency serving businesses across the US. OrangeWIP is a national multi-media media company dedicated to serving founders and entrepreneurs at the local level. In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed Jennifer Sutton, CEO & Founder of BRIGHT+CO Marketers and OrangeWip. Explore social media marketing and the upcoming book Jennifer will be launching with Mission Matters.
Watch Full Interview:
About BRIGHT+CO Marketers
BRIGHT+CO is a marketing community of smart, passionate, collaborative and talented people all over the globe. They bring together the best creative, strategic, business and media minds in order to make their clients’ brands and dollars work harder, smarter and more efficiently. Clients pay for the services they use. Period. They don’t help cover overhead for services they don’t use. And if that sounds fair and reasonable it’s because it is.
About OrangeWip
OrangeWip™ is a national business media company dedicated exclusively to serving entrepreneurs, innovators and founders in affiliate cities while connecting the shared experiences of founders across the country. Finally, a bold voice for entrepreneurs and founders. Written for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today is a special episode. We have Jennifer Sutton on the line. She is the c e o and founder of Brighton Co Marketers and Orange Whip, and also host of Hello Chaos podcast.
And also, also, wait a minute, upcoming author and one of our upcoming books as well, which I’m. So thrilled to announce and welcome Jennifer into, into our, into our mission matters community. Jennifer, just first off, your intro is getting longer and longer every time we do this, and welcome to show.
Thank you Adam. I’m so excited to be here. I appreciate the opportunity. Oh, well well, I, I love having a fellow podcaster and marketer on the show because let’s just say I’m not gonna make, we have a lot, all the work, but you’re seasoned. Yes. Well, let’s we’ll start this episode, Jennifer.
Yeah. The way that we start them all with our mission matters minute. So Jennifer, we at Mission Matters. We amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Jennifer, what mission matters to you? Well, at Braco, our mission is to be the most innovative. And dedicated and productive marketing, communi communications firm, providing growth companies with a level of thinking and integrated solutions that surpasses their highest expectations.
Where our motto is we work hard so our clients don’t have to. Yeah, it’s great. And love bringing mission-based entrepreneurs and professionals on the line to share their mission, really what gets them fired up in, in the morning to get out of bed and to go out there into the marketplace and world and make a difference.
So, just to get us a little bit further into your story, how did you get started and in the, being an entrepreneur really and, and kind of going the marketing route, how’d that all start for you? Well, after years of working at different ad agencies and marketing firms, I’ve worked on big established global brands.
I’ve worked with smaller and startup brands, but really helping companies of all sizes and types across various industries. Really developing kind of brand strategies and marketing solutions and campaigns. But I kind of got tired of that traditional. Advertising agency model back in 2013 and I ventured out and started Braco as a full service marketing and ad agency that was founded with the idea that we can help companies of all shapes and sizes in a better way.
Yeah. And, and I. I love that you have this experience of, you know, working for the large companies and then going out and starting your own. Cause I feel like a lot of, you know, entrepreneurs even would be entrepreneurs out there, which, not saying there’s anything wrong with corporate America, but just in general, some, some people have that feeling.
There’s, they’re, they’re wor, they’re in their position when they’re in corporate, the corporate gig, and they’re like, Maybe I wanna go out, maybe I wanna do something else, or they wanna hang their own shingle or for whatever reason. Right. And you know, some people kind of sit on the sidelines maybe a little bit too long, or maybe they just don’t ever get over that edge and just kind of like go out there and do it.
What do you think maybe some of the difference maker was for you that actually brought you to like, you know, I’m gonna go do this. Yeah. Well it was, I, I got frustrated with the business model of that traditional ad agency kind of workup. And companies and brands are only successful if they address an unmet need, right?
Yeah. They’re solving a problem. And for us it was that need for adopting a scalable service model with access to high caliber, vetted and experienced team. So, you know, I, like I said, I spent. 25 years on the agency side, really, you know, with big brands watching how things work, what doesn’t work and those proven methods and systems for building better brands.
And that’s really what the model is. It’s kind of how do you take a group of really high caliber experienced people combined with those disciplines for better. Integrated marketing communications plans, and really better digital footprints. That was the problem we were solving. Yeah. So I, I wanna stick in the early days, just a moment or two longer here because, you know, after you make that leap, I’ll tell you on my end, like when I went out to be an entrepreneur, I didn’t even know I was gonna be an entrepreneur.
Like, I was scared. It was scary for me. It was scary for me too. No, I was How was it for you? That’s what I’m, that’s what I’m getting at. How was your experience? It, it wa and, and I’ll tell you a little, you know, a little bit of mm-hmm. I never thought, like, I wasn’t ever one of those people that said, oh, I’m gonna own my own company one day.
That was not me. Me neither. So, you know, I, I, I was an accidental entrepreneur of, I got frustrated with the, with the traditional model. I ended up just leaving the, the agency I was working with, cuz I was working 90 hours a week. I have four children. My youngest was two at the time. And when I you know, asked the company of like, What is this?
You know, what is this for? Like where’s my path? Where, why am I working this hard? And they really didn’t have a career path for me. So I, that’s kind of why I said, well, you know what, I’m gonna give myself a. Some time to figure out what I wanna do. Do I wanna go work for corporate America? That was one option.
And so I started looking and interviewing with corporate America, and then I started looking and interviewing with other agencies some bigger, some smaller, and listening to some of the stories of founders of these, you know, smaller, boutique, mid-size, you know, agencies. One they didn’t have near the experience I had from, from branding and strategy and, and the, the data analytics side.
Mm-hmm. Or working with the, you know, the, the caliber of brands I had, I had worked on. Mm-hmm. And, and I was like, oh my gosh, if you’re successful, why can’t I be successful? And during kind of that moment I had left the company to kind of say, you know what, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna. Figure out what I’m gonna do.
I’m gonna take some, I’m gonna take some time to figure out what my path is. I ended up working fractionally for a couple of agencies and a couple of of brands, but my phone was ringing off the hook from all these people I had worked with in agencies from creative directors, research people, experiential folks, art directors, copywriters Media buyers.
Mm-hmm. Digital developers and these folks were either, you know, in one or two kind of shops. They were in these little silos and had built their own little client bases, but it was, their clients were challenging them to go, you’re a great art director, but I need somebody that can help me with mm-hmm.
X, y, and Z. Yeah. Or, you are a great media buyer, but I need somebody to, you know, who’s gonna develop my campaigns. And no one really had the infrastructure. Developed to go, how do we bring all these people together? Mm-hmm. And so that’s what I, that’s what Bright Co was founded on of recruiting this high caliber talent, but at the same time, bringing these proven discipline methods for building brands, developing I M C, having integrated solutions.
Mm-hmm. That. Generates better results. So it makes everybody on the team perform where their strengths are and where their passions are. Yeah, so that’s where I said we can do something a little bit different, and it was in that business model. So, and you used the word fractional, so, you know, maybe, maybe some people listening to this aren’t, I wanna, I wanna stick on that a little longer.
So the idea of a fractional C m O or or, you know, a fractional service. And you know, part of what we’re talking about today really is how you out, out, out, that’s rightsourcing different types of marketing. Can you kind of explain that concept a little bit? Yeah. So marketing. And it’s, you know, you know this Adam, but marketing has become extraordinarily complex.
Yeah. Right. People either don’t understand what marketing from the full spectrum is. They surely don’t understand what brand is. And brand strategy media has become so explosively complex, you know, you know, there’s a thousand tactics to choose from. A thousand tools and technologies, right, that are out there.
So, You know, and many companies have fractionalized a lot of their marketing efforts. So they might have a marketing manager that has hired a web company, a PR company, yeah, a social media company, you know, a digital company. But everything is in these silos, and so they’re being challenged by their c e O to go.
Where’s the money being spent? Mm-hmm. Sometimes it’s in in-house teams where all that overhead or it’s so fra it was like it’s fractionalized where the results aren’t happening. Mm-hmm. And that’s where a model like us that we come in because we’re one solutions agnostic. And we’re media conversant, meaning we aren’t selling a templatized solution and we’re not a, you know, if you go to a digital firm, what are they gonna sell you on digital.
If you go to an SEO firm, they’re gonna sell you only on seo. You go to a social media firm. Are they just organic creation of content or are they also helping you look at holistically? How do you build your communities through a combination of the organic and the, and the paid, and then are you sacrificing that time, money, and resources?
For another solution that could be generating other results for you. So we come at it from a holistic solutions perspective and that’s where we find that most businesses that we work with provide, you know, prefer that full service kind of fractional support because it’s the best way to achieve the results for that company.
Cuz you know, we’re, we’re a fractional C M O. Right. So we come in as that big picture thinker, the sense maker, the illuminator around what is gonna drive your brand. And then we can tactically execute along those different activities, but not in a silo. They’re integrated. Which is again, that’s like the, that’s the change maker, right?
Yeah. Is to make sure those things are, are being looked at and, and being measured. From a, from a more strategic perspective. And, and, oh, go ahead. And what I see is really this complexity that you’re talking about in marketing and advertising and media. This complexity is something that I think is pretty much antiquated.
The old thought process of when you, you know, once, once you have enough budget, then maybe you hire someone you know in-house to do your social media and like they’re gonna be the, the kind of jack of all trades they’re gonna do. We have just enough to hire one person, so they’re gonna do the. Social media, they’re gonna do the email marketing, they’re gonna run our ads, they’re gonna do all these things.
Like none of it’s performed. That’s not possible anymore. No, it’s not. It’s not. So, you know, you bring that up. So let’s just talk about outsourcing for a moment. Mm-hmm. Or, or let’s talk about what are your choices as a Yeah. You know, as a founder, Whatever size of your, your enterprise is, right? Whether you’re startup or you’re a scale up or you have 5,000 employees, right?
Yes. What’s the bigger picture of your, of your staffing philosophy? So every employee on average works 1880 hours annually. So if you hire somebody full-time mm-hmm. That’s how many hours they need to be performing their defined tasks. That’s based on them working 40 hours a week. Minus 10 national holidays, four weeks of vacation, two weeks of sick time.
Right. That’s where we get that 1880. Finding great marketing people in these different and complex disciplines is very difficult. Like you said, there is not a jack of all traits. There’s not. Look, if I ha I would have staffed my entire company with those people. Absolutely. We have become, you know, a, a, a for the large part.
We’ve got, we, we’ve. We’re all specialists. I mean, even when I look at and interview people for social media, we’ve got great social media content creators. Mm-hmm. But they might not be great community builders. We’ve got great community builders, but they’re not good content. You know, creators or in digital media, people are either great at seo, but they have no idea how to do crm and drip marketing and email marketing.
Those are all specialists, so, You know, when you think of finding all that talent, it is, it becomes really complex. Mm-hmm. Coupled with the overhead expenses of, you know, not only do you have to fill that 1800 hours of defined task, but then you have to pay for the tools, the technology and all the equipment for those roles.
Hmm. So if you’re a, you know, if you’re a manager or if you’re going, how do I staff this? You also then have to go, what’s that career path? Right? What’s gonna be their performance? Who’s gonna manage this person? Who’s gonna evaluate what they’re doing? Is it the right thing that they’re doing? Mm-hmm. You know, where, where’s the stra?
Because I think that’s where we, we gain from our clients, is we focus everything. There’s a strategic point of view, there’s a brand point of view, and that’s where, you know, I call it the magic happens. But you know, as an owner or a manager, You’re going, how am, how in the world am I going to manage these one or two people, you know, 1800 3000 hours on tasks that I’m not even familiar with, to be able to provide that guidance and that evaluation to make sure that they’re successful.
And so I’m getting every dollar value out of that person. You know, you, you know the rule of thumb, Adam, on on being an entrepreneur and a founder for every dollar you spend. They need to come back in cousins. Right? Yeah. So, so you, you, you have a $60,000 or a $80,000 salary. Mm-hmm. You multiply that by two to take care of their overhead, their benefits, all the other, you know, Expense of their vacation time and their sick time and all that.
So now it’s $120,000. Mm-hmm. Well, are they going to generate $300,000 in revenue to your bottom line? Mm-hmm. And a lot of owners and, and CEOs or managers don’t really think of it that way, but they should because mm-hmm. Marketing should not be an overhead expense. It should be a revenue generator. Hmm.
And so our model is we take all that headache away. You know, we manage towards activities. We manage towards the results. What is the return on ad spend? What is the return on investment? Or what’s the return on equity? So we alleviate all that pressure to fill those 1800 hours. No oversight in task management.
Nobody to work around vacation times. It’s really just take that pain away. It’s less risk. And it’s less overhead cost to that company. So for the price of one to two FTEs, you get a team of specialists that understand brand building, brand storytelling, a fractional C M O, looking at things from a strategic point of view and oversight at a tactical level.
So that is kind of our one, as we call it, the one stop shop for branding, marketing, public relations, advertising, but in a, in an integrated way. So that’s, yeah, that’s our, and when I look and when I look at like, so let’s just say that all of the hurdles that you just mentioned, that mm-hmm. Let’s just say somebody’s watching this and they’re like, oh well we have that.
We can do this, we can do that. That being said, what I’ve found is even, you know, when somebody does kind of go at building at that route, unless it’s their business, I’ve found that over time it gets stale. Cuz what happens is, Somebody, you know, if, if you’re that department or those individuals that you’re building up are only focused on your business, then guess what?
They know your business. When I think about the fractional side of things, there’s this whole other layer of benefit for the fact that that particular agency. Is not just working with your business. So it’s their job to stay up to date on what’s going on in marketing in general, not just for you, but for their other clients.
That’s right. As well. So when you think about the learning that takes place, cross industry, cross sector, cross size of businesses as you see one, a business going from one level to another level in terms of size or growth or other things, and kind of being able to foresee what those challenges will be, right?
Unless you’re working with an experience or marketer. Even your internal staff won’t know assuming you have em. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. I mean, yeah. You know, when you, th a a a lot of folks don’t realize marketing is both art and science when you break it down. Right. My background is in that research design, understanding buyers attitudes and perceptions, media consumption behaviors, the data to properly plan and buy media.
Mm-hmm. That also is the, the, the, the science side of those proven disciplines and process for building brands and brand strategy. You know, that’s the science side of marketing, right? Mm-hmm. That usually sets the foundation for great creative and I’ve worked with some of the best creative minds out there.
Mm-hmm. And from that I really understand, and our team, you know, not just me, but our team that we’ve built, we understand, appreciate, mm-hmm. We respect the art side of what it really takes to create a br, a great brand identity, to tell a great story, to know how to direct the visuals. In a way that’s going to get noticed and turning those into great campaigns and, and you know, full, you know, full brand programs.
Because a lot of folks think, I mean, you look at today’s, you know, TikTok and YouTube, you see this of, I’m just here to, to engage. Right? Yeah. I’ve got a hundred thousand views on that viral video. Mm-hmm. And then going. But you didn’t, nobody knows who you are. Yeah. You haven’t developed a brand.
Companies are commodities, right? Mm-hmm. That’s what a company is, but a brand is a value. Mm-hmm. And, and that’s creates, you know, that’s a difference maker of, you know, and so a lot of people are under this impression of that’s what social media is, is you just gotta throw stuff out there, you gotta just throw content out there.
But brand storytelling mm-hmm. Is different. Content generation and content marketing is a piece of brand storytelling. Mm-hmm. But it’s not enduring, it doesn’t lift, it doesn’t build the equity, it doesn’t build the value. And that’s kinda, that’s, I think is the difference maker and, and where I think it’s getting lost.
Mm-hmm. In this sea of, I think sometimes sameness. Yeah. And, and it’s a challenge. And I think that’s, to your point, a lot of companies that have said, I’m gonna bring these people in house, they, they either have the limited experience or if they are experienced at a higher level mm-hmm. Maybe they don’t have the tactical knowledge to execute.
Yeah. So, you know, we kinda, we like to say that we’re, we’re, that we’re the brand strategist. We’re that dot connector, we’re the integrator, but, but ultimately, we’re the true catalyst and the change maker within that company to help them scale and grow, because that’s where real magic happens. It’s when the science of marketing is seamlessly combined with the art.
Yeah, and I don’t think a lot of people recognize that’s the power of great brands. That’s, I mean, apple is great for a reason. They’ve invested a lot of money to make sure that they’ve got the foundation of the data and the processes and those discipline systems to make sure that their brand is consistent and their story is being told effectively across every single touchpoint, both externally and internally.
Yeah. And so what I’m being interested to hear this from your, your, your standpoint because you, you know, a lot of experience in marketing in general when it comes to trends and different things that are going on in your space. I know this is a broad question, but it’s intentionally broad. Like what interests you right now?
Like what excites you about, about marketing in general, whether it’s advertising, MarTech, social media. Oh my goodness. What get you excited? So a, a couple of things. Couple of. Trends that are happening. All the, these AI tools, right? Yeah. I mean, a new one pops up every day for sure. Every day. My, my, my team laughs at me cuz I, I go down at least every other night I come back in, I’m like, I’ve gone down an AI rabbit hole of, I have found six other tools that I wanna check out.
BEC but it becomes overwhelming of mm-hmm. You know, even just doing my own homework of does this help scale my team? Yeah. Does this take, you know, does this help bring my costs down so I can, can get better margins mm-hmm. On our service delivery. Yeah. But it gets, you know, you have to do an evaluation in your own matrix and criteria that takes time.
We’ve been doing that over the last six months. But it’s exciting to see a lot of these tools and we’ve sh and we’ve shifted some of our processes. Mm-hmm. Not necessarily that it’s benefited our client, it’s been more of, it’s streamlined us in our, yeah. In our collaboration efforts that we have adopted several of these tools.
And again, they’re coming out every day. The, and then, and also trying to champion the, but you can’t lose the ability to have a human eye. Like yeah, we have tested some of the AI tools of the design, ai, some of the copywriting ai. Mm-hmm. They don’t replace. A great copywriter. They do not replace a great art director and, and graphics professional.
Because they are looking at how do I templatize something. Mm-hmm. And it’s be, and, and then you’re back into the sema, the sea of sameness. Yeah. And they’re, you know, graphically, they look great. But they fall flat from a big idea and telling a brand story. Mm-hmm. So even though it might shortcut some ideation, it might shortcut some, you know, there’s ways to use that tool from a, from a creative team, but it definitely doesn’t replace great creatives.
And that great, you know, the, the, the art side of it, it just might help us amplify or streamline. Some of our processes. So, you know, that’s a big trend. It’s being discussed a lot in the ad agency, you know, model of, does chat G P t replace a creative team? No, it absolutely does not. So if, so, if brands a company are out there going, oh, well I can just, hi, you know, have this tool, it’ll, I don’t need an agency.
And, and it just, that doesn’t. That I’m gonna tell you right now, it does not. You have to have a hu a a an experienced human eyeball editing, enhancing, elevating that, yeah, the other trend is interesting, you know, cuz I’m, I, I’m like, You know, 30 years on the media side. Mm-hmm. Watching the trends around linear TV and streaming and the a ods and how is that all gonna play out?
And, and, you know, the, the. Is an advertising revenue model dead because everyone’s going to the subscription path and what’s the power of membership and subscription and what, you know, I’m, I’m seeing is no, actually a lot of these subscribers like Netflix and stuff, they’re going to add, they’re all gonna look like broadcasters here in the next, like, You know, within five years we will, and they’re all gonna buy each other out.
We’re gonna be back into, you know, no, you know, the five big broadcast networks. Mm-hmm. Or I would say four with cws trying to come in as, you know, a stronger broadcast being, being a, a real broadcaster. Mm-hmm. And then I think we’re gonna end up being, you know, two or three streaming models because we, as humans, we can’t adopt.
Yeah, the, the nine streamings and the five not gonna happen. And then all the cable networks, I mean, so we’re, the streamers are gonna act more like broadcaster mixed with cable. And it’s gonna have a big fallout because it’s not sustainable. So that, you know, and you, and you look at the, you know, who’s watching linear tv?
It is, you know, it’s the, it’s the baby boom generation. Mm-hmm. Who has the most disposable income. Mm-hmm. They’re still watching linear tv. And so, you know, the magic TV demo of 18 to 49, I think will become obsolete. In linear tv it’s gonna be more of a 35 to 65 is gonna be the magic demo.
That’s not been really talked about. That’s just, you know, Jennifer Sutton’s personal opinion. Yeah. Just watching the, the, the data. Mm-hmm. So if I’m a, if I’m N B C or cw, that’s where, that’s where my programming is gonna appeal to. And then anything that goes on my streaming apps is gonna be d you know, geared towards those, those younger audiences that, that want content, you know, a, a content churn.
But so it, that’s kind of fascinating to see. The TV landscape kind of changing and it’s gonna be, like I said, we’re gonna see a huge e evolution in the next 12 to to 24 months. Mm-hmm. And then I think social media, we will always see that evolve along with that. I mean, look at, you know, three years ago it was all about just, you know, push out content.
Now it’s become more well content. You know, it’s about just getting attention. And I think that’s where I think it’s gonna evolve, that people go, oh, Well, brands do matter. Mm-hmm. You mean I got these a hundred thousand followers, but if I ask anybody, are you doing business with me? Or do they even know who I am?
Mm-hmm. Both as an individual or a, or a company. The answer’s gonna be no. And you’ve become a commodity. So I think we’ll start, we’ll start seeing even the social kind of change up a little bit to be more brand focused. That’s, yeah, I, I do think it is, it is exciting like what’s taking place. I love being in this kind of renaissance of marketing, in my opinion.
Mm-hmm. With all the things that you’re mentioning. I wanna, I wanna sit shift, focus here a bit. Yeah. Just slightly, so Orange Whip yeah. How’d, how’d you come up with that idea? Oh my goodness. So that’s a great. Great question. So, brands, again, are only successful if they address an unmet need.
Mm-hmm. And for us it was, you know, why we created Orange Whip was we wanted a media company that delivers information and access between founders and organizations and the resources that accelerate their business growth. Mm-hmm. That’s where, you know, I, as a founder and entrepreneur, I felt isolated.
I don’t know about you, Adam, as a Right. You know, when I started a company in 2013, I didn’t know about resources that were there. Mm-hmm. I mean, you heard about, you know, s sp d c or, you know, there’s a, you know, a women’s business center. Hmm. But one, it’s like, What, what do I need to bring in there? Mm-hmm.
Oh, I’m, I’m kind of intimidated. I don’t know where to go. And it took me until 2018 to really get involved in an, an accelerator program and really kind of build a community and the, and really get a sense of the power of a community where I didn’t feel alone. Finally I found people that are like-minded that I could have really private Vulnerable conversations around, you know, my struggles, the barriers with whatever.
And then, you know, that was on a local level and I kept, you know, we, I felt like, God, that everyone feels like me. You know, I’m not alone. Yeah. We’re all facing those barriers. But then I started wor working in these larger national accelerator programs. Mm-hmm. And I was hearing the same sentiment. People in, you know, a bunch of entrepreneurs in the Oakland area or San Diego or Seattle, or Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio and Austin, Texas and Dallas.
Mm-hmm. Raleigh, Durham, Atlanta. I mean b, B, B. The same issues of I, you know, I see my city talk about entrepreneurism. Mm-hmm. But it’s the same four or five or maybe 10 people that all don’t look like me. Mm-hmm. So maybe I’m not an entrepreneur, maybe I’m not an innovator. Mm-hmm. I don’t, I maybe I’m not welcome at these events in these community building involvements or, you know, just not being knowledgeable about the resources that can help you.
Whether it’s startup scale mm-hmm. Create an enterprise. Or prepare yourself for an exit. And when I started kind of voicing that to organizations like the economic development. Organizations or maybe the, you know, talk to different municipalities, chambers of, is this really a problem? Like, I’m not aware of your, all these resources.
Yeah. I’m hearing that from other founders. Why are you guys not collectively coming together and, and creating kind of a content hub? And they were like, we can’t. We’re, you know, we all have our own agenda and our own mission just focused on high founders and entrepreneurs, doesn’t really fit our mission.
Hmm. Bec you know, even like, think of it from business media for sure. You know, a business journal has to serve the broader business community. Mm-hmm. They might only run an entrepreneur or founder story, or like tips and tricks or, you know, A few times a year. Right. And really kind of go deep dive. And they’re surely not going to create a resource directory or curate, you know, an events calendar and mm-hmm.
And find all the deadlines of grants for accelerator and incubator deadlines. Mm-hmm. They’re not gonna create this hub, you know, so as I started kind of going, this is a problem, they’re like, yeah, we need a solution. But it needs to be focused on the, on the local level. So that’s why we created Orange Whip, which is multimedia company.
We’re independent, so we’re not associated with one of these organizations. So there’s no competitiveness. We’re independent multimedia, and we bring what I call real world nitty gritty content. It’s unvarnished viewpoints. Support the growth of local founders, startups, and scale up. We have these hyper-local platforms.
They’re, they’re really innovative digital magazines that are aimed to inform, inspire, and motivate entrepreneurs and founders. Oh, did I lose my signal? Oh. Might have for a second.
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Am I supposed to click something? Mm-hmm. Okay.
All. All good. So are people hearing us live right now? Go ahead. And she went dark so I can All good. That’s, that’s the beauty alive. It’s expected. It happens from time to time.
Hold on. We’re still, for whatever reason, it just like the signal just stopped the input from our camera. That’s waiting.
Maybe. There we go.
Oh, D you can switch to the, the laptop camera. Let’s hold on. All good.
See, these are things that we’ll have to troubleshoot if this happens to us tomorrow.
You wanna just switch over to that? Yeah. Mm-hmm. All right. We’re gonna switch cameras. Real time. Come on. Here we go. There we go. Now you get a wider viewpoint of the, of the I’m in, I’m in. It works now you’re, now we’re here. Where do, where do we, where do we stop? Last thing you were saying was that it was really a, a hub and that, you know, the other, the other individuals like the, they, it’s in, you’re independent, you’re not to one organization.
Mm-hmm. Because the idea is that, you know, there’s no competition there in media or anything like that, but you’re really just creating a resource that others can use. That’s right. It’s a, it’s a part navigator, part guide. We’re storytelling we’re telling actually more diverse stories, whether it’s race, gender, or industries, because that’s what we find when we go into markets.
If there’s a another media, you know, if there’s like an innovation media outlet, they’re doing more breaking news of, Hey, these are the people that just got money. And, and they’re leaving out innovators across way different industries and spectrums. They’re only kind of highlighting who got VC money.
Yeah. So that, that was our mission. It’s, you know, it’s had our, we’re we’re exclusively serving founders and entrepreneurs. So that we help at the local level to help them scale and grow. And a part of that is, you know, mm-hmm. Part of our multimedia platform. It is, like I said, it’s an innovative digital magazine that has that, you know, articles and stories, but it also has a resource directory that we’ve curated.
So in each market we’re now, we’re in three markets. Greenville, South Carolina, Columbus. Or Columbia, South Carolina and Charleston, South Carolina. There are anywhere from like 70 to 80 resources that we have put in our resource directory. And then we have curated across 15 to 20 different calendars in each market.
Wow. So that we curate every month and, you know, update that real time. Wow. We send out a d a weekly newsletter that’s like, here are the deadlines. Mm-hmm. Of here are events you need to be a participate, but hey, there’s, you know, these are grant deadlines or these are incubator deadlines to sign up. So trying to make it.
As a one-stop, kind of one-stop shop, that content hub that we’re also pushing out that content through social and through email. On a, on a weekly basis so that they, you know, they don’t have to go and chase down and go, oh, did I, I wasn’t aware of that from the chamber. Oh, you know, they don’t have to go and source all these different calendars.
So that’s what, that’s what we do. So, so Jennifer, you know, I cannot let you off this show without you talking about Hello? Chaos. Yeah. So like, tell how, how did the idea come about? Like what, what can I want all my audience to go check it out? By the way, everybody watched into this, like definitely go check out Hello Chaos podcast.
But h how did it come about and what’s the vision? So the vision is, it’s, it’s really, again, it goes back to that bigger mi mission of, of Orange Wep of. How do we serve founders and entrepreneurs? How do we, how do we inform them? How do we inspire them? How do we motivate them? And, and as you know, in this day and age, it’s in multimedia.
So we wanted to have a way that we could talk to other founders mm-hmm. In, in a more intimate. Conversation. And we call it, we call it the, we’re exploring the messiness and the chaotic minds of, of founders and entrepreneurs and really having what I, what I find are very vulnerable conversations.
Our executive editor, who’s a, who’s a co-host of ours on the show, you know, she came from a, you know, the business reporting side and she’s like, nobody’s gonna wanna have that conversation. She’s like, they’re gonna be guarded. And that’s what you hear on a lot of other podcasts, like, yeah, you know, c e o mindset, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And our ours aren’t, you know, for whatever reason, I don’t know if it’s because it’s founder to founder conversations. Mm-hmm. We’ve, you know, we’re curious of like, mm-hmm. What are we, we call it our tagline is where Aha meets. Oh. So and it’s kind of finding out what are those aha moments.
In your, in your journey. What were those? Oh, you know, crap moments in your journey. Sometimes it’s where the, it’s where the Oh crap is, where Aha is born. And really kind of uncovering those, those secret sauces versus just hearing, well, you know, I had a process and I did it. We’re actually going deep down and going, tell me what that process was because, You might think that’s something that’s novel, you know, like a novelty, but it could make somebody else have a aha moment.
Yeah. Because we, we are, you know, we feel like we’re alone and sometimes we feel like even just the smallest thing won’t make a difference in somebody else’s journey. And what we found is it does. And so how do we, how are we amplifying, you know, those viewpoints? You know, kinda like your mission, but it is, you know, it’s in a way of how are we sharing that information so we help people accelerate on their journey.
Mm-hmm. But we’re, we’re weekly, we’re on all podcast platforms, so, you know, our favorites are Spotify and Apple. But you can also look at it if you go to Orange Whip for wp.com. We also have the, both the audio and the video that is, that is hosted all of our episodes. We, we are recording our 43rd tomorrow.
Wow. Amazing. Wow. So we’re excited. I, you know, that was a, we, we, you know, I don’t know about you, but you know, everyone was kind of warning us of, Ooh, do you really wanna get into podcasts? You know? Yes, you do. And, and it was, you gotta, you gotta stay with it. You gotta stay consistent. And what we found is a lot of the entrepreneurs and founders who are consuming our inform, you know, our media, mm-hmm.
Whether it’s the online magazine or, or Hello Chaos. And I’ll talk about the name in just a second of but it’s, you know, they’re like, oh, finally a local fast company, right? Yeah. Or a local, or a local version of Wired, but just digital. With the, with the ability to have that audio and video connection of storytelling.
But yeah. Hello. Chaos was funny that when we, we poll several thousand entrepreneurs of mm-hmm. Across the country of if we could create something locally for them, what would they want? They mentioned, you know, podcasts came up but. They wanted an uncluttered format. They wanted storytelling.
They wanted real, you know, agendaless information. They wanted a content hub. But you know, we also asked like, what are words, if you described entrepreneurism and being a founder mm-hmm. What words come to mind? Chaos came up. A lot. But what we found was it’s, it’s not, you know, chaos as far as like, ugh, it was, come on.
Welcome. Yeah, we gotta organize this chaos. We gotta welcome it. It’s so, you know, hello. Chaos was born out of that sentiment. Hmm. Well, it’s well congratulations first off on getting over 40 episodes and I mean, that in itself is an accomplishment and I, for everybody watching this, I always tell them I.
Always it’s good to hear from somebody else, but I’m like, yeah, start your podcast. Yeah. Write your book. Like, do like, get your story, get your message out there because it it like, we need you, we need you out there. We need more. That’s right. Content creators, there’s not enough people out there in my opinion, doing interviews and, and getting messages from founders and others out there like, Like Jennifer can only do so many interviews.
I can only do so many. That’s right. Interviews like all the individuals out there that are out here trying to help others get their message out there, like it’s about paying it forward. It’s about building a community. There’s so much more into podcasting and writing a book and getting your story out there than just, you know, how many downloads or how many listens or That’s right.
Like you’re creating content, you’re providing a service, and really you’re uplifting the entire entrepreneurial community. So again, over 40 episodes in. Big shout out and and I’ll give my, I’ll give my 2 cents on why your show’s great. And why, why it’s so real is I think that yourself and your co-host, like you’re, you both are so authentic in the message that you’re delivering.
Like, you don’t hold any punches. I’ve watched a couple episodes and you not only are, they’re not only like who you’re, who you’re. Share who you’re interviewing is not only sharing maybe some of the things that went you know, when not as planned during their entrepreneur career, but you also, you match ’em.
You’re like, me too. Like we, that’s right.
Few episodes. Yeah. Cause that’s so, but you’re right, it’s community building. Yeah. I’m, I’m so proud. I think the real of it draws people out in your show, like, and that’s what draws out, I think, great content from your guests as well. And that’s where I think it’s just an enjoyable experience to listen to.
And we’ll put all that all the links to all of that into the show notes so that so that our, our audience can follow up and, and listen. But speaking of that, Yeah. If somebody is watching this, Jennifer mm-hmm. And they do wanna follow up, they want, whether it’s about Orange Whip, it’s about Brico or, or, or hello Chaos.
I mean, just in general, how do people follow your story, your brand story, and how do they really connect? Yeah, so for Brico you can go to our website and that’s b brico marketing. Dot com excuse me, bright coat marketers.com. I’m gonna get kicked by my producers like. Jennifer, you should know the u r url.
And then Orange Whip and Hello Chaos is under one, you know umbrella. And that is Orange Whip, w i p because that stands for Work in Progress. Mm-hmm. Dot com. So you can, if you wanna be a guest, go to the Hello Chaos page mm-hmm. And send us a note. If you wanna follow me, I’m, I’m LinkedIn and Twitter are kind of my two, you know.
Mm-hmm. Go-tos, but I’m JJ. Median on Twitter. I’ve had my Twitter handle for a long time and I’m, you know, I’m, I think it’s from 2007, so just all good, you know, it’s kind of corny, but yeah. My nickname is JJ and then, and then LinkedIn. It’s Jennifer Johns Sutton is my handle. So connect with me there.
Love to share information. And, and like I said, I’m, I’m a, I’m a tweeter, so you can, yeah. You know, follow me and we’ll have some good, yeah. Good times. But yeah. But yeah, fantastic. Tell us. But orange web.com or he or, or bright co marketers.com is the best way. Perfect. And we’ll put all that information in the show notes so that our audience can check it out.
And and Jennifer, I cannot first off, it’s been great having you on the show today. We in Yes. We intentionally didn’t go too far into the book today. We’re doing, this is just a little bit of a teaser for the audience. We just want everybody to, to know how great you are in the work you’re doing because we will be bringing you back on the show.
Course when the book is live and out and published, because why? Well, number one, we wanna get do a deep dive into your, into your writing. But number two, Hey, we’re a publishers too. Like we wanna sell some books too, so. That’s right. My audience already knows I’m not shy. We’re, we’re okay with selling books.
So that’s right. That being said speaking of the audience, By the way so if this is your first time with Mission Matters or engaging in an episode or our content in general we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, executives and experts, and having them share their mission, the reason behind their mission, really what gets them motivated about making a difference, and not just the business world and marketplace, but in also in the world.
And if that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we welcome you hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission-based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. And Jennifer, really, it has been a pleasure. Looking forward to the next time we get to work with each other.
Same here, Adam. I had a lot of fun. Thank you.