Jason Taylor 0:00

Welcome today to today's edition of the People's Playbook Podcast. I'm pretty stoked today. I have Adrian Capobianco on the show today, who is the co-founder and CEO of I Love This Name Because I Love It, a fast growing platform helping brands and creators actually win in the new era of social commerce. With a background, Adrian's background is absolutely massive, but with a background spanning in entrepreneurship, innovation, and brand growth, Adrian helps reshape how influence actually drives modern business. Really cool subject and some great leadership and culture, you know, nuggets we're going to get out of this conversation. So, Adrian, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jason. Glad to be here. Yeah, glad to have you on. Adrian, your background's extensive. And uh you are a true, in my in my humble opinion, you are an absolutely true entrepreneur. When you look at your past and what you've created and what you've been part of and whatnot, you are I don't even know if I could say, you know what, you'd be uh a good employee. Maybe you just have to be your own company and your own employee, correct?

Adrian Capobianco 1:01

Well, actually I would uh I'd reframe that a little bit, to be honest. I think, you know, one uh one of my bosses a while back uh suggested this and said, you know, intrapreneur. A bit of a mix of entrepreneur, but ult entrepreneurial, either solo within organizations or within organizations. So yeah. You know, to build on what you're saying about, you know, the entrepreneur side of things is I've always loved to build, right? You know, I always kind of I always love the opportunity of kind of creating a vision of how something can be different and hopefully better, usually better. And whether that's building something net new within an existing organization or you know, from an idea to an actual business, that always gets me fired up. One of my favorite toys as a kid was Lego and it was kind of build-in, right? And yeah, it's uh, you know, I still have to do like landscaping and build stuff and construction projects and do that with businesses as well. So you the, you know, I think the what you're picking up there in terms of the entrepreneurial side, whether within organizations or as net new is really that love of kind of coming up with an idea, a vision of how something can be different, how that something could be better, and then putting a plan into place to actually build that.

Jason Taylor 2:10

Yeah. Well, let's keep on that theme right now. Speaking about building, so you're basically in charge of building the intersection of brands, creators, and commerce along the way. What leadership skill matters most in fast moving industries like this?

Adrian Capobianco 2:24

I'd say a few things. And whether fast moving or not, absolutely still relevant. It goes back to that vision that I was just talking about. You know, so that vision, that idea, even when we're you know presenting to a client about the opportunity of how we can, you know, move their brand or their business, leveraging creators, you know, we're always trying to lock in on what's that vision we're looking to do, right?

Jason Taylor 2:44

Yeah.

Adrian Capobianco 2:45

Well, that vision of what you want to do and why it matters is critical. But a vision without a plan to put that into action is, you know, just an idea, right? Everyone has ideas. So, you know, take that vision, put a plan together, and then, you know, things are gonna happen along the way from plan through to execution. There's uh you know, a famous, yeah, I don't know if you know, there's a famous Mike Tyson line about uh plans. Do you know the uh do you know the quote?

Jason Taylor 3:12

Yeah, I love that it's one of my favorite quotes. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Adrian Capobianco 3:16

Yeah, exactly. Right. So uh at that point, you need, you know, get up ability, which is get back up after being knocked down. And maybe we'll chat a bit about that after. But it's that adaptability, really, right? It's like you have a plan in place, but I can almost guarantee you no plan goes exactly as envisioned. So adaptability to maneuver and evolve is necessary. And then the resilience, because you know, you have a vision, you have a plan. If you're starting something, if you're building something, you will get knocked down. You will, you know, fail along the way, you know, small failures along the way. In my estimation, the people are the most successful, you know, it's not that they haven't been knocked down, they just get back up one more time than everybody else. So vision, plan, adaptability, resilience, these are all things that I think are pretty important.

Jason Taylor 4:00

Yeah. When you say, you know, when you're dealing with that leader that just needs to get back up and try something different or try a new approach to it, how hard is it to get them to kind of see that when they're just sometimes they feel defeated along the way and they're just like, Adrian, I don't know if I can do this again, or I don't know if this is gonna work. How do you kind of get them back on track? Bring it back to the vision, right?

Adrian Capobianco 4:19

What's the vision? What's the goal? And also, I mean, part of understanding that it's a normal process, right? I mean, if you're out, you know, trying to build new clients or build something different, you may get six, seven, eight, sixty, seventy no's before you get a yes, right? And in my experience too, like a no or you know, a failure or a loss doesn't mean that that will be that forever. We have a very good client now that was, you know, a client a decade ago and different leadership, different, you know, global environment. That was a very, very, very difficult client. Didn't close the door on the people who were good people there and their clients today. So, you know, a way a a no or a loss along the way doesn't mean that's indefinite either, right? So bring it back to the vision, take yourself up, know that it's norm, it's part of the normal process.

Jason Taylor 5:06

And I I love this conversation because there's so many times you want to shake somebody and say, in a positive way, you just want to say, hey, it never goes as planned. And that's okay. Like when you see these fine executed plans that companies and people and entrepreneurs and business leaders do, it wasn't like, hey, you know what? We just took one take on that and it worked out perfectly. Right. And if it is, it's very few and far between those those wins along the way. There's always been some tweaks, some adjustments, some ways we have to adapt just to get our vision to make it a fruition, right? Absolutely.

Adrian Capobianco 5:40

I mean, in the rearview mirror, everything's 2020, right? Yeah. Yeah. When you're looking back to how things have gone, it can be very obvious. When you're looking forward, it isn't. So back to that adaptability. So I 100% agree with you. Yeah.

Jason Taylor 5:52

Yeah. Beautiful. Adrian, you've launched multiple ventures. How do you know when you need to double down on something versus walk away from the idea? Because you are you're a very persistent person. I know that. We've we've done our kind of analytics and whatnot. And that's probably why you're so successful, is because you've done, you're very persistent in the way you do things. I could tell you you couldn't do it, and I know you'd say, yeah, don't think I can do that, Jay. No problem. And you'd you'd probably text me later on with a picture of yourself doing it, right? So how do you know, hey, I'm gonna double down on this right now or I'm gonna walk away. It's time to walk away.

Adrian Capobianco 6:24

That's a tough one. Again, like in hindsight, that answer is 2020. It's perfectly easy to see in the it's very difficult to see. I think it's also it's also a bit of a personal situation, right? You know, like I've tried to put myself in situations with mixed success where there's not a runway that I'm gonna, you know, hit the end of. There's always kind of, you know, the art like you there you get create a situation where you don't have to walk unless you want to. Because, you know, sometimes it might just be a timing thing, right? It goes back to that kind of resilience I can have to, especially if you're trying to do something different. You're trying to do something new. That is not the path of least resistance. So try to put yourself in a situation where, you know, you don't hit the end of the runway. That's not always possible, and that's sometimes difficult, difficult, but kind of give you that. But I think it also goes back to that kind of resilience, that kind of get back up. Eventually you're gonna hit a wall, right? And what I trust is not what people say, what people do, right? So people are like, oh, that's that's a great idea. I love it. And then, okay, great, spend some money with us, let's do it. Right. So, you know, the ultimately you're gonna hit a wall if it's not, you know, if it's not generating revenue, if you're not getting that traction with clients. Like, you know, the get back up is a good thing, but you know, it's gotta, you gotta see that traction, you've got to see that momentum. You know, momentum for me is right in building a business. So it's like if you're not building that momentum, and momentum doesn't always have to be dollars. I mean, certainly that's a very good thing if it is actual dollars revenue coming if uh it doesn't have to be profit, but certainly that's a good thing. But momentum in terms of partnerships, in terms of, you know, employees, team, that sort of stuff, like people buying into that vision. If you're not building that momentum, that might be the time to time to fold. But again, this is a very personal question because everyone's situation is different, right?

Jason Taylor 8:10

Yeah. Has there been ever a time, Adrian, where somebody said, Adrian, this is ridiculous. Stop, quit, stop, like walk away from this, and you've actually said, No, I'm still gonna trudge forward.

Adrian Capobianco 8:20

I'm sure there have been lots of situations, you know, small and large. But I mean, actually in terms of like a business, like a vision of the business, not that I can think of. Along the way, I'm sure, right? And it's, you know, often it's like it's never that black and white quite often, unless you're really going down kind of a silly path, unless you really have, you know, voices of friends who are kind of or not maybe necessarily but friends, but like trusted voices who will share an OBS answer with you, right? Often, you know, it's a little more platitudes and stuff like that. Maybe in hindsight be like, oh, I thought that was a bad idea. I can't believe you're doing that. Like, yeah, thanks, tips. You should have told me, you know, 12 months ago or something. But no, I think there, I would say absolutely yes in the sense of, you know, always, you know, looking to build a business through new clients, right? And build new clients and pitch new clients. And there's a lot of no's along the way there to build to those yeses. So in that sense, all the time.

Jason Taylor 9:11

Great answer. Because I love it, it runs on partnership and performance. How do you build accountability without losing creativity? Kind of think that's a weird question. Uh, why are why are they mutually exclusive? Let's talk about that. Yeah. So uh so a lot of times when people are talking about accountability, we lose creativity along the way because they're just looking to just get the numbers, get the numbers, get the numbers, right? And we sacrifice creativity. How do you actually make sure they both can live within the same world? I don't think they need to be mutually exclusive.

Adrian Capobianco 9:40

Now, if you're talking about, you know, depending on the type of business and that sort of thing, right? You know, kind of but the word you use was accountability, right? You didn't use like profitability or revenue, you use accountability. Yeah. So, you know, I'll give you an example of where it's absolutely not mutually exclusive. So in our, you know, our our business ability is to connect brands with social media influencers, right? It's about 10 million influencers in North America. We have data on every single one. For some brands, and we're going to touch on this a little bit, for some brands and businesses, working with influencers, you know, even though the first influencer program I did was over 20 years ago, for some brands, it feels very new and very risky. So, you know, you could say we have a creative approach to this in that we're one of our few peers, we will guarantee the performance for a client. The reason we do that is one, you know, clients look to us to be the experts, and we are. So, you know, we say, you know, we don't just say we're the experts at it, but we put our money where our mouth is in a certain sense and guarantee the performance of a program. And we're very specific with what that means. But I'll say that, you know, in in a way, it'll it it's a creative way of approaching the partnership. It's creative in that none of our peers really do that, but it's very performance related, right? Yes. So, you know, it helps de-risk the input. So as clients are reviewing proposals and inputs and that sort of stuff, it takes the risk off the input because they know at the end of the day they're going to have a guaranteed output. And that helps so it's a creative way that's very performance oriented, that's absolutely hand in hand. So I've always been a fan of, you know, I've spent a lot of time in the advertising business. And when you talk about creativity, it's like, you know, the creative, right? It's the ads, the content, the material that goes towards that audience, right? But to me, creativity and how you run a business and how you fuel a business and accountability are amazing when they're absolutely hand in hand and uh and they don't need to be at all mutually exclusive.

Jason Taylor 11:28

I love it. I love that. And I love how you brought some clarity to that. Let's keep down that road of metrics right now. So in a world full of metrics, what numbers can actually miss leaders the mo mislead leaders the most?

Adrian Capobianco 11:41

I would actually to build on what we were just talking about, performance and how we kind of de-risk the out inputs and guarantee an output, yeah. Uh I would say the exact same thing. It's, you know, the the perception that action is output for leader, right? So I'll give you an example. You know, answering every email in my inbox and going through everything in the inbox and getting through everything, that's not an output, that's activity, right? So okay, I claimed my inbox. I got done with everything in my inbox. That that's not an outcome, right? So, you know, as a thinking that being busy or activity is the outcome is not the same thing. And understanding, I find this I'm guilty of this as well. But you know, kind of link, you know, what activity generates the best outcome is important. So, you know, being busy doing things does not equal an outcome. And that's probably kind of a a metric to be, you know, to be wise of and be careful of.

Jason Taylor 12:31

I talk to leaders about that all the time. Just uh you just touch on that. People think sometimes when I'm busy, I'm just swamped. I'm busy and whatnot. When you actually break down their day and you think, okay, you've been busy, but what what did you actually accomplish today? It's amazing the difference between that question and actually just thinking I'm getting I'm getting stuff done, right? It is, you know, we can get trapped by reacting as opposed to being proactive. And the other thing I feel leaders get caught in is managing versus leading. Because when they manage, they're kind of in the business sometimes too much and they're doing everything. When they actually trust and they communicate and they actually lead, they can actually get so much more done. And the results, the results are rewarded because of that.

Adrian Capobianco 13:13

Well, I can tell the story on something I call the possum principle. It'll probably take a minute and a half and maybe a bit of a divergence, but but also this is, you know, but before that, and I'm gonna get back to this habit, you know, just speaking of this reminding of it, right? You know, it's it's easy to get busy throughout a day. You've got calls, you got meetings, people can do this kind of stuff. I developed a bit of a habit. I I learned it from someone along the way. But, you know, in the morning, the two or three things that need to get done that will make a difference at the end of the day, right? Literally write them down and have them in front of you. At the end of the day, I need to get these two things done. They're they will create an impact on my team or my business or outcomes. And kind of it's kind of keeping yourself accountable to it because a hundred things are gonna come up during the day. But you know, those two or three things that need to be done, if they're not done, I miss the mark that day. A lot of problems solve themselves too. And there's maybe a little counterintuitive. Uh, I don't know if you know about possums. Uh so I kind of call it the possum principle jokingly, but they're kind of crazy animals. Possums have survived since prehistoric time. So you know they have survived the test of time. Uh, do you know possum's defense mechanism? Playing dead? Not actually playing dead. When they're attacked, there's no fight to the death, there's no run your ass off. Uh, they fall into a coma. So when they're attacked, they actually take a nap. Literally, they fall into a coma. I learned this when I had a giant possum in my garage, and I was like, oh me, animal bigger, and you know, try to scare it with a hockey stick and it just laid there. It's still, and I'm like, wait a minute, why is this thing not afraid of me? I'm bigger, I'm louder, I got a hockey stick, and it just sat there. And I'm like, okay, maybe something's weird with this thing. So I just kind of backed away and left it alone. I came back and it was gone. When they're attacked, they fall into a coma. So I kind of joke about the possum principle. There's a you know, a hundred you know, goofy guys with a hockey stick coming at you in a day. Yeah, you don't need to react every single one, right? Okay, that's interesting. I hear you. You know, come back tomorrow morning, give me 24 hours, and we'll address it then. And yeah, eight out of ten of those are gonna solve themselves. And the two that haven't, you know, uh need your attention. So it's kind of that, you know, that that activity versus uh outcome. I know I diverge there a little bit. Sorry about that.

Jason Taylor 15:07

But no, I actually I actually love it. And and I actually love the road you're going down because I believe that sometimes leaders and founders and owners and C-suite, they react too quickly. And when you actually just take time to actually step back for a second, you know, and and let the possum get out of the garage, nothing really happens, right? And how many times I I know I I'm guilty of this, I've actually seen an email and I've, you know, here I am, keyboard wizard, getting ready to type away and just ready to send that. And and then sometimes somebody will say to me, Hey, don't send that email right now. And I read it even two hours later, Adrian, and I think to myself, Oh, thank the Lord I didn't send that email because I was speaking with emotion. I was speaking, I was reacting. I was, you know, either elated or pissed off at something that I I saw on the screen, and I said, I'm gonna react right now. So it is it is a blind spot for me as a leader for sure that sometimes I just have to say, you know what, do the do the Adrian thing, and I'm just gonna go in the house and hope this possible leaves the garage right now, right? Yeah, yeah. And then uh yeah, yeah. Unbelievable. What separates teams that move fast from teams that just stay busy? Because we're on that subject right now. So I think I would take that back to vision, right?

Adrian Capobianco 16:20

You know, it's kind of we city kind of like how do you light up? Like it's that vision, right? It's not uh it's not the kind of daily active like what are we here to do, right? What are we here to achieve? What's you know, what's the the prize at the uh end of this? Eyes on the prize. It's the vision. I think so.

Jason Taylor 16:35

Do you ever have to take leaders back to that with your clients? Do you ever because you deal with many leaders and they're probably all very different along the way based on you know what industry they're in or what they're dealing with. Do you constantly have that kind of vision, kind of mantra in the back of your head that says, hey, like let's just dial back into what we're doing this for in the first place? Usually, not always.

Adrian Capobianco 16:56

Uh, you know, like a lot of things, I'm you know, I'm I'm certainly imperfect on that. But even the the vision doesn't have to be the massive vision for the business. It can also just be for a project, right? Yeah. And I try to kind of coach my team, you know, when we're do developing proposals for clients or things are going forward. Like, what's our vision here, right? What's our what's our desired outcome? And then come back to that, right? So if we pitch a client an opportunity of where to take their business with influencers, or how will, you know, how will help them connect with audiences in new meaningful ways and ways they haven't done before and what we want to achieve from that, there'll be a vision at the beginning of that. We get people excited about. I always kind of coach my team to go back to that, right? What was our vision and did we hit it or did we miss it, right? If we hit it, great. If it changed along the way, why? And does everyone align with that? And if we missed, why and what are we going to do to get us there?

Jason Taylor 17:44

So yeah. Yeah. Adrian, this is totally uh just from conversation. So I just want your view on this. So I was just thinking in the back of my head, you must deal with so many leaders and people along the way. And and I'm a big believer in leadership without titles, right? It doesn't, you don't have to be a CEO or a president to be a leader, right? But when you're dealing with the companies that you deal with, you probably experience both not an age, I don't want to use that, but a more experienced leader that's led many companies or meant led many things. And you probably deal with also very young leaders that are founders or just starting things up along the way. What's the main difference between them both being just so different in in age and kind of experience?

Adrian Capobianco 18:21

The difference between a more tenured leader and a younger leader, these are gonna be generalizations, and certainly they're not all don't always, you know, younger leaders, I would, you know, quite often not uh ambitious, that's not the right word, but perhaps, you know, a bit more optimistic about what they what they can do. Sometimes with you know, more tenured leaders, it's you know, been there, done that, not gonna work. And sometimes that, you know, that that's learning, right? And that's you know, that sends you down a path. But it's I guess the the nuance is kind of the, you know, versus the optimism and kind of the learnings along the way, a bit of both in there, right? Create, yeah, you know, keep the optimism for what can be done without sometimes being hinged to the learnings of what can't be done. Both are important. And, you know, there's a bit of a a merge, you know, a merge between those. It can be, it can be great. Yeah. So, like I said, generalization certainly, but there's benefits on both sides of that coin. And if you can tap kind of the you know, optimism for what can be done with the learnings of, you know, how to make sure that's most likely to see the light of day, uh, that can be great.

Jason Taylor 19:29

I love that. I actually think it's a great reminder. So I would actually ask you personally, you're you've led you know many things and many companies and started things and co-founded and whatnot. How do you keep yourself balanced between that? Because there's probably some things I could bring up with you, and you'd say, ah, Jay, I did I did that, done that, it's not gonna work and whatnot. How do you actually balance yourself and kind of say, okay, I I need to make sure that I I keep that optimism and that that juice in me that just makes me kind of keep going?

Adrian Capobianco 19:57

How about I um I I pivot on that a little bit, not kind of just with myself, but with team. Okay. The team and stuff like that. So, you know, and I've had this for a while, you know, I'll often have kind of a conviction on where I want to take something or go with something and have a kind of a perspective on why I think it'll work. I've had folks coach me along the way, uh, you know, maybe kind of step above that and either, you know, the team that's working on them, bring them along in the journey that you've already locked in in your mind of where you want to go. So they kind of, you know, they they're not just a the the destination, but they understand kind of the journey of getting there to that vision. So sharing that a little bit. But also, you know, letting team members help develop that journey themselves, right? Instead of just saying go to point C, say, how would you get to point C? What do you think? Right. So, you know, I might already have a you know idea on how to get there, but if my job is limited to telling people how to get there, I'm not scaling myself, right? I'm just I'm just giving directions. So I think the you know, trying to, and I've tried to get better at this over the years, but trying to ask team members how they would get to an outcome versus letting them know how I think the reason to get to an outcome is, and then sometimes they end up getting to better outcomes than I would have thought of. So yeah, yeah, it's kind of trying to like flip that a little bit and and give team members who have you know an ownership mentality the opportunity to build a vision and and a route to getting to that vision themselves.

Jason Taylor 21:26

Absolutely love that answer. Let's go down that young path for a second. If I were to say to you, hey, Adrian, there's there's some young leaders out there that want your advice, and you could say, hey, here's I'm gonna take this young leader and I'm gonna give them three three pieces of advice. What advice would that be if you said, hey, it's somebody came to you and said, Adrian, help me out here. I'm starting a company or I'm kind of starting my journey, and you could say, hey, here's the three things I want you to remember along the way. What would what would you say to that person? I'd go right back to the first four we talked about right at the opening, right?

Adrian Capobianco 21:57

I really feel like we're, you know, beating this one over the head. But the, you know, but we know what's the vision? Like, you know, what do you want to accomplish? What's the plan to get there? Like build that plan, like you said, right? Be be ready. That plan will not go as planned. So have some adaptability in that and resilience to get back up. I'd also say, you know, kind of take the moment to enjoy the wins along the way. I love that. It's like, you know, like you win a big piece of business, it's kind of like good news, bad news. Good news. We won that giant piece of business. Bad news. Gotta deliver that giant piece of business. Uh and and that's what you got to do, right? You got to go from like, you know, that idea, that vision into the plan and execution. But, you know, try to take a moment, savor it, enjoy it. And uh yeah.

Jason Taylor 22:41

Do you remember one of your mentors and and some of the advice that they gave you along the way?

Adrian Capobianco 22:45

Yeah, I think, you know, I think that one that we just talked about, uh, you know, one of my early bosses has become a you know a partner investor along the way. It was kind of like, you know, you kind of lock in on an end goal and then march towards it. And often that end goal seems, you know, reasonable and you get there. But don't march that alone and you know, bring bring your team along on that kind of mental journey of, you know, why and how that end goal so that you know they're they're not, you know, you're not dragging them along, they're pushing you forward, is probably a good way to say.

Jason Taylor 23:15

I think I think that was uh that was a good learning. Adrian, you've been more than generous with your time today. You're a pretty spectacular guy. And what I mean by that is just your different kind of concepts on leadership and founding and scaling and moving with speed and and trust and communication. So uh want to thank you for your time today. Uh appreciate you and appreciate kind of what you're you're you're bringing to life. I'm sure that, you know, in 20 years, because I love it's gonna be massive. But more importantly, there's probably gonna be 20 other companies beside that that are beside because I love it, just based on kind of your leadership style and how you like to, as we talked about earlier in this conversation, build and create and whatnot. I don't think that's ever gonna, I don't think that's ever gonna leave you. I think that's what you're meant to do is build and create. And uh I appreciate your time today. That's amazing. Thanks, Jason. Take care. Hopefully uh your audience got one or two nuggets. For sure. They always do. They always do. If you love that session and that conversation as much as I did, would love to have you join our People Playbook community in the link below.