Latest / UNLEASHED By LoyaltyOps / Why Trust Beats Talent in the AI Era | Bryce North

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Why Trust Beats Talent in the AI Era | Bryce North · UNLEASHED By LoyaltyOps

• Bryce North: I think I was about just over a million dollars in debt at age thirty, taking a deal on Dragon's Den, being screwed over on that, losing my business, and having my fight my way out of that again. And so, all of this kind of came from one thing and one thing in itself. Mickey Anderson: Well, today we have a very special guest. We are chatting with Bryce North of Don't Be a Little Pitch, probably my favorite business name of all time. So catchy. And we're gonna be chatting about PR, what he's building as an agency, his experience, what he's betting on and what he's not betting on. So we can all benefit from his experience. Bryce, thank you so much for joining me today. Bryce North: Mickey, it's awesome to be here. Su excited to chat and thank you so much for having me. Mickey Anderson: it's my pleasure. I have a soft spot in my heart for builders, for people who start up companies and and get things moving from the ground up. And so I'm really excited to dig in on your experience. But let's kick it off with what is don't be a little pitch? Give us a a high level overview of the company and what you're building right now. Bryce North: Yeah, great question. mean, we are a PR agency and the biggest thing we're doing is just building frameworks around attention and understanding how attention should be deserved. And so I've been obsessing over the fact of how do we do PR properly and not just scammy like the rest of the world because it has a bad rep for it based upon how bad agencies can be. So we we're kind of a team of people that take things on an edgy type of standpoint, which comes across as how do we polarize people enough that they want to listen, enough that it builds trust, then how do we do it in a leveraging way that actually can get you quick ROI. but also sustainability. So I'm just geeking out on everything agency wise in terms of just optimizing public precedence online. That's my biggest focus right now. Mickey Anderson: PR is one of those industries that is it's almost an enigma. And the fact that you mentioned ROI to me is a huge deal because I mean I've personally worked with a ton of different PR agencies over my career And in marketing in general, ROI and attribution is hard, right? And so in this fast-paced world for your clients, what does ROI look like for them? What is the the highest value impact that they're seeing from your efforts in PR. Bryce North: Yeah, do you mind if I like answer your first thing you said first in terms Mickey Anderson: Yeah, yeah. Bryce North: of like why this model is broken right now? And I think Mickey Anderson: Uh-huh. Bryce North: like to scale an agency, Usually people need cookie cutter processes and and and ways of doing things in order to optimize because human capital is expensive. And so the reason why marketing I think doesn't work for a lot of people is because we apply these cookie cutter formats or processes to clients and we cross our fingers hoping it will work. Even though we like perfectly align our ICP, we're going in thinking, I'm gonna try this and then it hopefully it works. And it doesn't a lot of times. And so we find those lucky clients, and those lucky clients become case studies, right? And so that's why I don't believe in case studies at all. But the whole process along this is this a peer of that spin the wheel, hope that we hit it, and nothing is ever really customized, but also nothing's ever really improved. And so when we work with our clients, I take this a look of everything has to be different, everything has to be customized to what they're doing and done in a way that grows with them. And so when I mentioned this framework in the very beginning, I care. About how your customers buy the process or decisions, how they convert. I care more importantly how you're perceived online and what that perception should give you in terms of authority, what it should give you in terms of exactly how your business is presented in terms of conversions and all that. So the biggest ROI our clients get really does vary. And it changes. Their mindset changes in their ROI when they start working with us and we're getting results. Number one is always I want more sales. Great. PR is lead gen, not trust gen. Once we get enough trust, we get leads, but in the very beginning, I'm very very clear and re-articulate that we have to build that foundation. So our clients coming wanting more business and wanting exactly a lot more people to their site and a lot more partnerships. But what we find is that they get a lot more opportunity in terms of new business, new new structuring, new partnerships. And so the ones that have been with us for many, many months, you know, over 12, 18 plus, get a lot of people knocking on the door saying, I found you here, I heard you here, I want you to speak here, I want to feature you here, I want to give you this award board or I want to partner with you this. So they've doubled, tripled, Forex their business in terms of actually making strategic alignments in different industries or same industries in order to grow their business. That to me is like super, super huge. If we want to talk about scaling and growing, we got to talk about finding different ways that we actually can apply ourselves and our talents in our business in other markets. I think that's what's massive for a lot of our clients. Mickey Anderson: there's a so many gems you just dropped in that 30 seconds that I just want to spend all day talking about. The first was trust gen versus lead gen. That to me is there's such a distinction between the two. Just because you have attention doesn't mean you've generated trust or a buying opportunity. And I think in marketing in general, there's a huge gap in that. People don't recognize that you need to build some trust, some trust before someone's gonna hand over a ton of cash. And I'm curious to know, so with all this AI content out there, with all of the vast quantity of messages and distracting us in terms of our attention, how do you see PR and trust working hand in hand? Or do you see them as two separately distinct things that need to be built separately? Bryce North: Really, really good question. And actually, it's helped us out more than anything right now in terms of actually how PR should be operating. So for me, I've built my whole business on cold email. and you know, it surprises a lot of people of I get so many cold emails and DMs at DMs a day from AI, all this junk. how does that work for you? I think like that that's the power in what we do right now because the same thing for articles and stories is being outputted at a velocity I can't even describe at, and the number of pitches that reporters get because of AI. And so There's something really interesting about the way content is being perceived online. Number one is that Google's favoring human written content, not AI slop. And so they're being really picky and choosy about that. Outlets are now not allowing people to pitch them in AI or using AI to write these stories. They gotta be authentic. And so if we're finding more that Google and LM models are picking up these higher authority places that prefer human written content, we have to be more authentic. But also on the other side of why Michael emails work and why our content works, is because it's real. we can be edgy, we can be Different. And if you have a personality online that actually is really good at polarizing and actually not just producing tons of content but great content, you're already winning. We're like we're blowing up right now and usually in months that are very slow for us, all because of the fact of if we can be super human and authentic and build trust around some people, that is now lost in the terms of AI world. And so if you can trust somebody, people care more about trust than they do about talent these days. And so your goal is to build that credibility because they're gonna work with you because you're human and so it's really worked in our favor. Mickey Anderson: Yes, you touched on so many points and there's a lot of fear and excitement around AI and the ability to create more and business owners are really trying to leverage it as much as possible to keep up. But to your point earlier, differentiating is hugely important. And I think a lot of business owners and companies and marketers in general fall into that trap of I'm gonna follow the framework, I'm gonna do the playbook, I'm gonna do the same as everyone else because it seems to be working. But they end up just in this pile of AI slop, as you mentioned. So talk to me a little bit about your thoughts on differentiating and standing out in this age where it comes off as authentic. Bryce North: You gotta break every rule. And and I I bring this back to cold emailing again because I break every single rule in cold email and I get amazing results from this. the industry average I think is like one to two percent reply rates. I get ten percent plus always. and it's outrageous, but I send extremely super long emails that tell a story that offer nothing. And so I've taken this mythology into everything we've done in our agency of attention online of understanding how do we not fit in and how do we, you know, first of all, how do we polarize, right? How do we have an opinion that's gonna You know, maybe build evangelists, which are extremely important. These are the people that yell your names atop of rooftops and spread your business. These are not fans, they're evangelists, which you want, but you're also gonna have haters. But also that creates a lot of stir online that makes people pay attention. So number one is like how do we just polarize in a way that makes people listen? And then number two, how do we be unique enough in someone who's actually constantly there with an opinion that builds a lot of trust? Like we we don't sell people anymore, they sell themselves. And so if they're gonna work with you, partner with You invest in you, whatever that is, they're gonna do their own informational research on AI tools in Google, Reddit, what whatever, in order to find out exactly the type of person and business you are and what you offer and what you do and how that can benefit them. So if we're not providing them an informational journey online, somewhere where they can take themselves and get excited and see that the benefits of that, we've completely lost them. And so I'm so for now the new school version of landing pages, which is just story informational story pivot points online that frame us in a way that people. people want to actually contact us and work with us. Mickey Anderson: I love it. The break every rule it hits me in the soul because I'm very much a rule breaker. So I'm like, yes, someone else who doesn't play by the rules. but the this all comes back to what I'm seeing just as a consumer online when I'm scrolling the internet, you know, wasting my day away. It's the personalities and the brands that have an opinion and share it and do so unapologetically. That really stand out. And of course, people are afraid that you're gonna lose people. You're gonna, you know, polarize to the point where you have haters. But I feel like if you're gonna have evangelists, you have to have haters. They come together. It's not one or the other. Do you agree? Bryce North: Yeah, I mean your friends are not paying your bills, right? And so when you look at it that way, it's like your content is meant for your audience. Always meant for your audience and not for your friends and your family. Which I get like even for myself and the people we work with, that's really hard. You know, we've got clients which are single and like Instagram's my dating app too. I don't want to just put in business content out there. I'm like, I get that. You gotta make that decision. There's a healthy way of balancing and showing personality for who you are. But I mean, in the end, we are an intention economy and a trust economy right now because of AI. You have to grab a attention and you have to grab trust. And so the best ways of doing that is putting yourself forward. And I don't know if you're an Alex or Hermozie fan. Yes or no. It doesn't matter. The one thing he said that I really hold true now is that he mentioned his business didn't start blowing up until we start talking about his relationship problems with his wife Layla. And so I don't say you got to go out there and talk about heartbreak, but get real with people. You know, make them believe you are someone that actually cares and not someone they can put on a pedestal because you got the super talent. Your goal is not to be the smartest person. in the room. Your goal to be the most trusted person. Mickey Anderson: Yes, that is quotable. We're gonna steal that because it's so good. It's so true. I mean, I was just looking at our analytics online for the past 90 days recently, and oddly enough, it's always the posts where I'm like talking about my husband and vacations and family or our dog that blow up and get that initial attention grab. And then the people who are our people stay for the rest of the content. Right. But it's never the company post or something about frameworks or teaching that stands out and captures the most attention. It's always a personal post, regardless of the channel for us. Bryce North: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean th there was a study done out there that those that actually overachieve in their work actually keep the the client a lot less than those doing the bare minimum. And so when you when you read this study a lot more, it says people just want to work with someone who cares just as much about their business as they do. And so when you have relationship builders or those that actually have similar problems and mindsets, it's easier to build, yes, friends and relationships, but a lot more trust that way. Again, back to the trust word. those that try to overperform and overdo, great. I mean that always loses it. itself in a sense where we are just now it's doing more, we can't communicate it. And there's a lot of negatives with that itself. So if you're gonna take anything away, just how do you actually connect with people in a way that makes them like you, trust you, want to stay with you, but also builds a relationship along the way where they can tell others because they disrespect you that much. Mickey Anderson: I love that. Now I want to come back to something you said earlier around frameworks and the cookie cutter approach that many marketers face. And I think this ties to scaling and what you're building now because a lot of people have this concept or idea or belief that in order to scale, it must be simplified, dumbed down, cookie-cutter in order to get the economies of scale that you want. And you're kind of doing the opposite in saying, okay, we have a framework, but everything is customized. We need to make sure that our clients are getting the best possible results and it's it's adapted to them. Walk me through this balance that you're doing right now where you're doing the best for your clients and customizing while also scaling your agency. Bryce North: This is one of the hardest things honestly of like our agency right now we've been through and going through is how do we constantly just scale, scale, scale and grow by keeping quality and doing things right and doing things different. you know, there there is a process and it seems like a fee to get to your first like a hundred or a fifty to a hundred K a month, but after that, it's no longer it's no longer an offering game and a service game of your agency. It's always like a team operational and like these frameworks you build. So we try to do things in a way like like you mentioned before that our super custom. But like what's really interesting about this is that we utilize a lot of AI now in order to actually help with processes, not just work, but processes. You know, how can I get my team to take on more people? but also reducing their workload in ways that matter. Like that that's an operational type of efficiency we can talk about. But what I care about really a lot more than anything else is not being the typical burn insurance agency, which I think a of people are doing. A lot of people, a lot of agencies in order to scale, they will increase volume and input. And output, but those clients stay from three to six months. And my mind is just absolutely crazy. And so if you are doing volume of that, yeah, you're going to scale, but you're also going to scale operations and people and capital. And that's what a lot of people do. If you can work on two things: one, retention and sustainability within clients, so keep them on longer, sales efforts can go down. Then you can work on growing with your clients, offering new programs, services, and just frameworks along the way. I like to crawl, walk, then run and not just go full blitz right away. So when we bring on people, yeah, our process. These are the same to set up and go through, but as we're accumulating and going on, do they need awards? Do we write books for them? Long story on terms of getting Google knowledge panels. Do we get more press speaking? Whatever that looks like. This is changes and shifts based upon their sales process and what's working. And so why we focus so hard on this on the retention component of it, because another really fantastic way of growing business is always referrals. And I think people do that wrong. I do not want tire kicker referrals, which you know anyone's gonna pass anyone on because they like experience. I want referrals. Based upon success and results, the other people in the similar industry will pass on. Like I care about these types of relationships. So if I can focus on the retention side of things and the quality of work and then deviate from there the type of frameworks that works from my team and plug in the system to help them do that, then we're actually in a like well-oiled machine that's scaling appropriately. And I can do less sales work with less people who do better content and quality of work. This like that to me is a system that actually really does work. Mickey Anderson: I so agree. I think retention and increasing LTV is so underrated in so many businesses or just underappreciated, get not getting enough attention. And it's such a lever for your business. I mean, you've already acquired the client, you already have the relationship. How can we tack on, serve better, get better results over time? It seems silly that people don't focus on that, but it's it's massive. The other thing that you mentioned too was the focus on quality and getting results for your clients. And I think a lot of people would might argue, does that slow your growth as a business by taking your time instead of trying to get as much volume? What's your take on fast growth on, you know, trying aiming for revenue milestones at a rapid pace versus taking your time and focusing on quality? Bryce North: Yeah, good question. And we balance that a lot. I mean, obviously, you know, I being the CEO and the founder of this, you know, I want to hit these revenue goals, these growth goals, right? On these internally set, externally set. and when you really realistically look at all of this, do these really need to be hit right away and this fast? I mean, when you look at scalability and raising money, I mean The faster you grow, you know, the more money you raise, like just the more problems you have. And yes, maybe your competitors and friends or people are growing faster, raising more money, but now they've got a lot more problems to kind of deal with. And so the goal is that how do you contain and hate your goals, but do it at a slow growth trajectory that makes a lot of sense. Because if you kind of and we've done this before, you peaked up and you rised, your systems, your team, they can't handle that. I I think one of the hardest things to build in any operational structure is team and culture. It's always going to be. And so if you burn out the one thing that's holding everything. Together and don't have systems in place that make sense for scalability, you're gonna crash and burn to lose some great people. But more importantly, throughout everything else, is that you are really, really good. It's gonna burn out the quality of work and have a bad reputation. And so I think what we have to do in terms of customizing everything is just be very smart, be very meticulous in terms of our process along the way of where does everyone plug in, how do we optimize and how do we grow from that. So I've slowed down growth. I slow down growth intentionally so my team can catch up. So we can bring on better and bigger clients throughout our process and what we're doing. And focus on the thing that matters the most is how do I build a sustainable PR for the future of AI more than just trying to hit, you know, a multi, multi-seven figure revenue number in order to pease myself. you know, and if I didn't I don't have investors, but if I had stakeholders to pease them. And so I think it's that balance. Mickey Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. I think the rise and fall to the level of your systems is very applicable as you grow. and I'm curious for you. So one of the conversations I've been having a lot lately is the focus on kind of that competitive advantage as we move into this wild next decade. And a lot of people are betting on AI and technology and those operational efficiencies and and the low cost tools that they can plug in versus What it used to be was like get better talent, invest in your talent and arm them with those things. What's your take on your or what's your approach, I would say, on growing your business, cultivating that culture and balancing, you know, taking the time to invest in the culture and and your people while also investing in technology and arming them with that? Bryce North: Yeah, I see this both sides all the time. And so I was in the AI rat race for a good eight months. And I just step back and saying, okay, I'm pretty well versed in this. I can, you know, code quite well, build build things quite well. My whole life is AI right now. Every moment of the day, from personal to, you know, relationships to businesses, AI. but we've always forget one thing. Those that are always chasing the most the better improvement process in AI are really gonna have that stall and time and gaps and and changes in industry. And I found that for ourselves is the faster and the quicker we try to chase AI. The less we and on this we put on our team, which is extremely important, the more optimization focused we're trying to be, which is just a killer in itself. And we we lose on this moment we have right now, which I think is very special, of AI is going to be really damn good in the future, probably the next year or so. But we have this trust moment, this personalization moment, this moment where people are still skeptical that we need humans. And so I'm focusing on relationships with clients. My team also will get to that, but also with the marketplace and and putting myself as real as possible with content online with what I'm doing. Because this is what's gonna scale. Yes, your competitors and friends and everyone's focusing on AI, but if you can step back and focus on humanization and actually having relationships, go earn the money right now that that's kind of lacking because there is a gap. We are winning in this right now. People are coming to us because we're real. I'm still jumping every single call. They love it's not AI. And so I'm accumulating cash enough right now so that when we are moving a huge shift to AI, I'll have the money to do so, right? I'll have the optimizations, the relationships. More importantly, I'll have a team that's excited and ready and eager to migrate. We're doing AI training with them. We're getting them well in depth what this means and what that looks like. But more importantly at all, our culture is incredible. People love to work here. And I want that excitement for them to want to implement all this along the way and embrace change and not push against it, which usually most cultures do. Mickey Anderson: That's huge. you're right. I think it is this kind of beautiful opportunity moment right now where a lot of people have their head in the sand focused down on AI technology optimization. And there's a lot of people just sitting around like, Who's gonna talk to me? Who's gonna pick up the phone? Who's gonna show me the way? Who's gonna build the relationship so I trust you? And not a lot of companies are doing that. And it's it's so inspiring to hear that not only is that true. And you're able to capitalize on it, but it's also causing these beautiful cascading effects within your team where they get to benefit from the human focused, relationship focused, as well as your brand. Bryce North: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm kinda going backwards. I I love to go backwards in like a future forward market. I send snail mail, like actual real mail now to get clients. Mickey Anderson: Love that. Bryce North: Like it's just when when something has ruined or changed an industry so much, we we kinda regret and we fantasize over old methods. And so I think again, I want to repeat this, but if everyone's focusing on AI and you're feeling so behind about that, good, who cares right now, right? Focus on the one thing they're leaving behind right now, are relationships and and and humanizing everything. And so I'm going back And we're doing co-calls again. we're we're doing actual real mail again. and when I'm sending messages to people, it's stupid, it's funny. My my biggest secret right now on getting people to reply to me is I just send him a dog wagging its tail in a gift format and saying that if you don't respond, he's gonna look at you or stare at you indefinitely. I mean, it's just how silly and weird can you be to get people's attention? Whether that's you know, sending photos of you carrying babies or kittens of a burned building, done that, or you know, really funny. you Photoshop images of you doing weird things done that as well too. All these get responses and they get laughs. And I think the biggest thing right now for us is just understand that stop automating, stop being real, focus on quality and content. And once you have that, then optimize with AI. Mickey Anderson: yeah, there's so many quotables from this. what you're talking about here is creativity, right? It's outside of the box thinking, it's going against the grain, it's coming up with new and unique ideas. And I think a lot of people are so dependent now, and they don't even realize it, on AI and technology to make their decisions and come up with their ideas that there's not a lot of new stuff coming out there. So when you can send something that's funny and genuine and tap into nostalgia. that AI's not gonna tell you to do. I think it's it's such a big differentiator and opportunity for so many. Bryce North: Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, the amount of agencies I've hired I think majority of all agencies are big black box. You hire them for a bunch of money, you don't know what they're doing with that, then it's usually just a big waste, right? So like coming from an agency owner. and so I've hired a lot of agencies, but the ones I've kept around the longest didn't perform. the ones I kept around the longest actually would call me daily, send me voice notes. Hey, Bryce, I found this trending right now going, why are you not doing this right now? Like people want an advisor or someone to talk to or or just really relate with. And that's why I always say the bare minimum is always the best. But if you can really build a relationship with someone they trust your advice, then you have one major goal in every service interaction. And this one major goal is that you're supposed to provide your client, the person you're working with, with one big decision that's gonna help transform their. Business. If you can do that, whether that's adjacent or within the actual service itself, you've got a customer for life and someone's going to stick around. Mickey Anderson: Yep. Mic drop. So so true. Now I wanna I wanna kind of step back because it li you're very wise, you've learned a ton, you're building fast, you're doing things that are unique, and you don't get there by accident. There's usually a lot of battle scars and a story behind that as to what gets you to where you are today. So I wanna step back and talk about your history and how you started, what are some of the milestones that you went through that kind of built this perspective you have now on how you're building. Can you walk us through a little bit of your history? Bryce North: Yeah, I mean it's it's a lot of startup failures. And so my background is within hardware like IoT, I should call physical products applications. it wasn't marketing. And so even back within university, I was building a lot of like advertising mirror tech, that's really hardware integrated that means things would happen, walk into a mirror. I invented a product that was sold on Dragonstone, so Canada's version of Shark Tank, which was sold in Best Buy and Walmart and we scaled to twenty countries around the world. they gave me the opportunity to launch a Kickstarter. That did like a million dollars in 45 days. And so I've had this experience of like just building product. and I got really good at pitching investors along the way. And so I moonlighted a little bit as like a venture capital, an angel capital like strategist of helping people solicit and raise money for their startups. And so all these businesses kind of just inherently failed along the way. Some were quite successful, but the whole process allowed me to learn everything myself, you know, and bootstrap everything myself. So that got me to understand. You know, paid acquisition to SEO and content to website building to doing different marketing channels to actually how to build hardware design everything along the way. And so my history has just been a cluster of bad and great failures along the way that really gave me the networking skill set. But the biggest thing that I learned when I was like in my mid-20s, I had this mentor and he said, like, right, something amazing happens when you turn 40. I mean, you lose half your energy, and the only thing you can rely on is your network. And that didn't really kick. gone until like my late 30s where I'm like damn you know what like I'm not 40 yet but I understand where this is going and so the people around you the communities that you've built everything along the way. These are the people you need to like knock on their doors and ask for help and guidance and kind of build the next business. And so my whole focus of through everything that I'm doing right now is how do I extend my network, get more visible in a way that allows people to recognize who I am, makes it easier so when I knock on a door, people will answer me 'cause they've heard of me or they can Google me and see that I exist. And so, Yeah, I've had a lot of like bad experiences in the past of losing like best friends along the way in terms of business. I think I was about just over a million dollars in debt at age thirty, from losing my business, taking a deal on Dragon's Den, being screwed over on that, losing my business, and having my fight my way out of that again. And so, all of this kind of came from one thing and one thing in itself. I was really damn good at telling stories and getting myself in the press and getting people to listen, getting myself on stages. I'm from a small city in Canada a lot of people haven't heard about, no one even really cares about, one that no one even really trusts. And so my biggest foot forward was just understanding how do I take experiences, everything I did, and talk about those. And not talk about what I built or the product or or what we're offering people. People really gravitated and connected toward who I was as a person and how I crashed and crumbled and burnt out and how I built myself from there because a lot of people are going through that and they want to relate with somebody who has the same story. Mickey Anderson: Mm. Okay. The first thing that comes to mind is the tolerance for failure. I think a lot of people are afraid to fail and they don't allow themselves the experience and the learning opportunity at trying and failing hard things over time consistently. And I feel like there's this indicator of success that's like the number of failures you have, the more failures you have, the more likely you are to succeed. And And it's it's so nice to hear because I mean some of us look at ourselves and think, man, I'm a failure or I failed at these things. And we take shame to it. But I think it it builds grit. As you said, you've been consistently pushing, building, getting out there, trying new things. I think there's a lot of lessons learned and you don't learn them unless you actually do the work. And then there's perspective that you gain. Like you said, by tapping into mentors and other people. being able to go through those experiences, ask for help, hear different opinions and and just put it all together and it creates this kind of beautiful, well rounded person who can tolerate risk, who can tolerate failure and keep going through the hard thing. And that's what's gonna lead to success. Ugh, so good. Bryce North: Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I I call it callusing yourself. And you know, Mickey Anderson: That's okay. Bryce North: yeah. And I mean, it's it's not just about accepting the failures and being okay with them. I mean, I'm pretty numb to a lot of stuff now. Like if I lost everything yet tomorrow and I was, you know, another million dollars to be like, okay, I know how to get out of this. it's gonna take some time, but like, you know, I'm not tied to this and I figured it out before. but everything else is just how do you understand how to optimize and do things quite quickly? Understand tech to make things more efficient and you're pr you more. Efficient in terms of we don't. I'm not talking about AI. I'm talking about actually understanding how to assemble the right people, how to bring the right talent and mentors. my biggest thing was I didn't have a big mentor base, what a lot of other people do. I figured everything on my own. I researched, I tried, I failed, I spent a lot of money. and now I've decided to really grow this network, which is really important. which is how I kind of almost got into PR. Just I gotta get myself out there a lot more. Then the opportunity knocked, people asked me to do it. Here I am with an agency, I didn't choose it. shows me I love it, we're good at it. but that was the whole process of getting myself exposed. So I think your network's extremely important, but it's so damn hard to build and get people to actually want to trust you and work with you unless they have a reason personally inside to feel good about either helping with you or something they're going to leverage from that. Everyone's inherently selfish when it comes down to this. And so I think throughout the everything else of being callous and this whole process, discoverability was like my biggest game changer and everything else that people will listen to me now. I'm not the most important, coolest person in the world. but I've done a lot of cool shit that it gives me at least a reason to talk somebody. and mostly because my story's out there for them to actually learn and see it. Mickey Anderson: Yeah. That storytelling piece I I I think is huge. A, I think we fall into our best businesses. We don't necessarily go in with the intention of building the thing, right? Because there's there's usually a few businesses behind us where we were really into it. It was the thing we wanted to build, and then it crashed and burned. And we end up in this new business that we didn't intend, and that ends up being the one to bet on, which I find kind of funny. At least for me, I know that's what's happening over here. but the other thing is the storytelling, and I think. It sounds like through all those experiences, you learned how to persuade, how to connect through story to get people's money, to get their buy in, to get attention, to grow businesses, to get support. And now you're able to really leverage that well, I would say, well trained muscle in supporting your clients and supporting your business now in an age where storytelling is going to be so damn hard in general. Bryce North: Yeah, I I think you're right about that. I I also think it's interesting. I mean, I've had sales analysis people come on my team and go through my sales process and they're like, Man, you're not good. Like like you can optimize here, you can be better, more targeted you, your objection handling sucks. I close at forty to fifty percent of all calls. we do thirty to fifty month like so I suck, I get it, right? Or do I do things different? do I build trust and communication in a different way? So I don't hard sell, I don't need to. but the way I built my personality and the brand everything around this is like you just feel damn good and just know coming in that like in terms of your gut like you want to talk to this person and you're gonna get a lot of value out of this right your walls are down and humor does that that's when you reincorporate humor don't be a little pitch kind of breaks that ice a little bit but your walls are down you're more receptive you're less argumentative on everything that you're doing and so if you can have a healthy conversation because people generally enjoy you and want to be there then things become so much easier. So I mean screw the processing system that everyone does. Everything is built for automation and and blasting in order to grow in a way that's unhealthy and unscalable and just kind of dial things back in a way of how do I take a deep breath and honestly make the world see who I really am because that's gonna attract the right people, close things a lot faster, and just generally just make things a lot more damn fun. Mickey Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. Amen. as we look forward, so with don't be a little pitched now and where you want to bring it, what is your like number one focus right now in setting yourself up for that sustainable growth you're aiming for? Bryce North: Yeah, so our number one focus for like sustainable growth is just to really improve our retention even further, build all our frameworks so we're offering a lot more PRs, blurred the lines with comms and social and all that. And I still think majority of people are doing it wrong. And so I'm trying to find a way of how do I do low-hanging ROI right away. We're talking like newsletter swaps, stage sharing at the same time, a Reddit presence. So people are coming on and seeing you and like heavy and SEO. So we can get the quick ROIs, but then the dividend paying media in the end where we're having big interviews and repurposing content and everything. So I'm obsessing over frameworks and retention in ways that provides a lot of value and then kind of bleeds into other things into the terms of the person's business. I've been building relationships with social strategy. Just web strategists with people online that do like media training and storytelling training. All this really matters to make you just a better you and a better business presence online. That's my big focus right now is just helping people really shift the paradigm of people like perceive them online through the right systems and the right work within customization. On the other hand is, and I'm really excited about this, is that and we're so close to launching but building our own PR tool that does everything that we're doing in terms of automation, but doing it for people. The hardest part of this is just getting the pitches down to sound humanized. So that is just a component we haven't figured out yet. And I don't really know if I even want to right now. But everything in terms of like list building, deliverability, which no one ever focuses on, like the right context, the right people, the right moments, the right time. And so, you know, we've built you know a list of like 300,000 reporters, which we've got profiles in every single one, understood exactly how to push them through, what angles and research to do. So like you can tell my excitement right now, like this allows anyone to come. do PR in a way that we do that's super successful. And so we're kind of pushing and launching that out right now. and I'm more excited because my team can utilize this and handle more clients at the same time, be customized and put everything together. So my focus is like standard building my own team and services. PR is my playground. It's gonna fund all the cool projects and things that I'm doing as an agency should and allow me to kind of offer better services back to my team or to the marketplace. Mickey Anderson: Love that. And so I'm I'm super curious too when building a tool like that. You mentioned arming your team with it to help them increase capacity and efficiencies. Do you see it as a self-serving product that you could sell on its own or would it always be integrated in or are you unsure on what that looks like yet? Bryce North: It's it's gonna be both. I mean, I built this just for my team. I like for them to be optimized, do things more, because it takes us four to five hours to build a list, you know, per client per campaign. And so can I get this down to thirty minutes because we have all the context already? Why can't AI just know every single reporter and everything they've written about for the past two years and give us recommendations? I'd rather spend money in credits than time. And so this built and started as an internal tool, but like any great tool like Slack or you know what we're building here, this has to start internally. And so I found the option. With my team. I've now working with people and partners and other agencies having the same problem, like, hey, like, knock, knock, like I've kind of got this, or like this is cool. or other like people working as executives in big companies named PR. I mean, this I believe, and I'm maybe I'm a little biased, but I've worked with like Mock Rack Incision, I've worked with Meltwater, I've worked with all these. I hate them. And so what I've built in a way that I think works extremely well. So yeah, there was a marked application for this. But building along the way, I think the make mistake that everyone makes is that like they try to build before they sell. And so that's where we get pulled into our own job like jobs we don't want to do because people already sold into that, then we build a business around that. And so I think internally is the best way to kind of test it. And it seems to be pretty fruitful doing that. Mickey Anderson: Yeah, I I'd agree. It's it's incredible. A, it gets your team bought into it. You can essentially test it out, find bugs, find opportunities, and get, you know, the the force multiplying power of all these brains using it coming together to improve the product. And then it opens up all these different opportunities as well. And now I want to chat just briefly about the future of PR and agencies in general, because I from the outside, I've heard a lot of people saying, It's gonna change so much. Some things aren't gonna be relevant anymore. It, you know, the ground is gonna shift. All these agencies are gonna go away. I wanna hear your take on the future of PR and the future of the agency world. Bryce North: It's honestly changes every six months. I know so many agencies that are dying, so many people that can't keep up with that. People are not changing. We're thriving right now. like we every single month we're growing and growing. And so I'm trying to stop that growth in order to actually control it. But I think agency worlds changed because and I'm I'm not gonna take this like Take this lightly. I've chatted with so many agencies and people who run businesses. I travel a lot and I met a lot of great people, just really dumb people in terms of actually running businesses. I think a lot of agencies really suck. I think people are really bad at offer offering service delivery, are not organized, their team is not put together. It just blows my mind the number of people I work with. I'm like, you own a company of this size doing this. No wonder why your clients are leaving. So I think it's for the good. The good that AI is making it so easy to build what we're building. And so easy to create an agency and create the work that it's just gonna flood the market with crap. I like a crappy market because when the market has a really, really, really shitty outlook, I can come in with good and something different they haven't seen before, then have a conversation where the client comes in super annoyed, pissed off, they're not gonna buy because they're not excited what happened before. They were burnt, and I can turn that around. And I'm really good at that. Really good at showing how I've done that before, my personality, my whole process. I like people that have been kind of kicked in the shin too many times because I can bring them in and show them it's done the right way. So agency world's changing. Products are becoming commoditized, work is becoming worse. This gives a really big opportunity for those that actually do really good stuff and focus on not just output, but focus on actually showcasing who they are. Not I screw case studies. I'm talking about actually showcasing your story, your team, your culture, and the transformation of people you can actually help in a real format that's more of a data study than a case study. There's such a huge opportunity for that. PR is changing so much too. Outlets are are crashing, they're going down. these outlets are refinery reporters, they're being selective who they work with. I got close friends in Forbes and the way they explain explain to me how their whole structure is just blown up and different and everyone's getting laid off. Really, really creates a great opportunity for us. one, we built a lot of relationships, but they don't have time to write articles. so they rely on us to write it for them. They take all the credit, I don't care, I get to write exactly what I want. Two, it allows us to build more relationships with Red Elts to make that happen. but three is why I'm building this software. I I got a lot of reporter friends and people I work with. Three, four, five hundred emails a day they get. and so the issue is that majority of these hit spam, majority of these are not interesting, the majority just do not cover what they're looking for. So what I'm building along the way will hit inboxes and it does. My role has been cold email for the longest time. I get infrastructure. I clean and I will to my own harm to be the best at this. number two, at the same time, is how do I make it enticing enough that you're gonna open it and actually, you know, the content there is gonna be relevant. But three, what is that content? I do not want to be a feature. I want to be a source. I'm not going to sing, hey, you covered this product, you would love to cover this. It's hey, you covered this and it trended for this reason. This is what's trending right now, this is what we're working on. This is the next piece you have to cover. This is how you become an actual source. The reason we've got our clients in business insider and forbes like in 45 days multiple times as being a source is that you gotta actually understand how people digest and use content. You have to be a a source and a reliable partner for them, more than just looking for something in return. And that all comes from just being humorous, putting yourself out there in an authentic way, and more importantly, showing that you actually care and not just mapping. Mickey Anderson: That last point about being the source, I think for me is a huge kind of nugget from this conversation. And I think it's a perspective a lot of us can take into our own businesses. It's like you don't want to be a salesperson. You don't want to be a commodity. You don't want to be, you know, a highlight in somebody's day. You want to be the trusted source for your people, right? Whoever they might be. You wanna be the trusted source for your clients who they come to you to solve their hardest problems, the trusted source for people in the industry because they know you know what's going on and what's gonna work. And the volume game isn't gonna get you there. It's the quality game and then scaling volume once you've got that dialed in, right? It's I think a lot of us focus on optimization before we've actually got a good thing going. And so it's a little bit of slowing down to speed up. But I I really love that I'm gonna write a sticky note, be the source, because I think that's such a a a bold and needed take for today. Bryce North: Absolutely. And that goes back to kind of what we talked about. To be the source is to be the network, to have the connections. The most powerful people out there are the ones that know people that can intro you to other people at the same time. And so everything that I again focusing on is just like being that network, that presence that people can actually understand and trust along the way through everything else. And I think that's extremely important. Mickey Anderson: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Bryce, this has been awesome. So for our listeners, I wanna kind of drill this down. You have so much experience. You're building something so incredible and unique right now in a really, you know, highly tumultuous time, but also there's so much opportunity that you're capitalizing on. And so for our listeners, if there's one core thing, belief, experience, takeaway that you want them to leave with, what's that one thing from today's conversation? Bryce North: Yeah, I Make yourself discoverable and pick your platform and own it and understand it. Whether that's going to be Instagram or TikTok, mine's been Google along the way or LinkedIn. But understand your platform. So build your dominance, understand your presence, build a story along there. But don't expect things to come knock on the door just because you put your story out. These platforms are meant for you to actually knock on someone else's door enough times where you actually have enough story and reputation of your network, people come to you. So my biggest advice is just put yourself out there, choose something, do it right. Understand what platform your customers buy on. and then go and start building content, but don't just sit back. Start knocking on doors once you've done that. Mickey Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. You gotta take action. It's not just gonna come to you. Bryce North: Exactly. Mickey Anderson: That's it. Amazing. So for the listeners who want to come and check out, don't be a little pitch. you wanna send them somewhere in particular, where's the best place to find you? Bryce North: Yeah, actually if you want to have a conversation, I'm not for everybody. I speak fast, I work fast, we which you can probably tell here. But if if you want to have a conversation, I'm open to it. interest in P or not, you can go to don't be a little pitch dot com and reach out and book a call. We also under our header on the right hand side have this media authority score, which I really love. But if you want to see how you're perceived online, how your competitors view you, how the media views you, and really what your reputation is in terms of like dominance and credibility, go take that score. It's free. I'll give you an output and some suggestions how to fix that. Mickey Anderson: Love it. Make sure to head over everyone to check that out. It's fantastic. I scored terribly. So there's no shame. You know, you Bryce North: Yeah. Mickey Anderson: you gotta start somewhere. Awesome. Price, thank you so much. This has been just an absolute pleasure. I learned a ton. I know our listeners did too. So thank you. Bryce North: love being here. Thank you so much for having me. Mickey Anderson: Awesome.