S E754: PR Beats SEO: Benjamin Behrooz on Building Real Authority in 2026

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Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. How do you stand out in a market that feels completely saturated? How do you build something that feels real and trustworthy when visibility alone doesn't cut it anymore? Those are the questions Benjamin Berroux solves every day. Ben is the CEO of Branding Los Angeles as the flagship company and many other with the Branding moniker across the country, and he spent years building businesses move beyond the vanity metrics game. The followers, the clicks, the surface-level visibility, and build what happens to be real authority. The kind of authority that converts into consistent, high-quality leads and long-term revenue. What makes Ben different is that he doesn't silo strategy. He integrates branding, PR, search optimization into a cohesive system. So let's get into it and dive into what actually drives growth in 2026 and beyond, why the old playbook no longer works, and how you build a business that people don't just notice, that they trust. Ben, welcome to the show.

Amazing. Thank you for that amazing intro. I'm excited to be here today.

I just, I'm really excited because you talked about a few things before we jumped on. Number one, your footprint. You mentioned that you're just back in town, that different cities have different energy, but you've been able to create a footprint and really a stronghold across the country. So I'd love to hear a little bit about that. And you also mentioned that You've just landed a big client because of podcasting. So very excited to hear that news. That's what we want to hear as hosts, that we've actually helped the people who are coming on our shows. So first, let's get into branding. How did you start in this business? Obviously, that's a great name, and talk a little bit about that journey.

So the big thing I can say about my life, my success is just showing up. And I think that's something that everybody needs to understand is you're not going to have things happen for you if you're at home. Praying for it to happen. You need to show up and pound the pavement. With us, we started with very simple beginnings. It started with me and my— rest in peace, my puppy that just passed. It started with me and him in my 400 square foot single. And I had a small little place and ambition and drive. And I was given opportunities to be around amazing people and just showed up and kept trying from taking my skill set from working with Sony to working with on a political end to be able to start my own company. It was just steps that were ahead of me, problems that became opportunities. And that's something that everyone needs to really understand. Your worst day becomes your best day because at times that puts you in a position to take action. And my life has always been about taking action based on what's happening and being able to safeguard myself to be able to have a more systematic way of growth. And I think as you kind of mentioned, our footprint as a group. So right now, I just came back from a trade show. I was in Las Vegas. I was at the Morgan and Morgan trade show. It was for lawyers, but for me, education is key. So being able to understand how things are working, to have a company that gets 75,000 leads a week, that they manage that. And for me to be able to meet with those people and actually make relationships with them is after I go in and I'm able to talk, the value that's there. So I'm in a constant state of educating. I'm in a constant state of wanting to be able to help people in a more thoughtful and strategic way. So as you see us, we've grown our footprint. We're in California, which is our hub. We're also in Texas. We're in New York. We're in Hawaii. And we just launched Florida. That allows us to have a footprint across America. And a lot of our clients that we're working with, they are national brands. So I can't really pick and choose saying, oh, we're going to stop here in California. No, we're taking some of our trademarks to Dubai. We're taking it to the UAE. We're taking stuff out of the country. So we're reaching more people. And a lot of our work is storytelling. For us, we just really create impactful items that when someone sees it, there's an emotional response. Right now, there's so much noise. There's so much clutter. And I love, I love everybody using AI because their stuff is so generic. They're not going to win the war, but we will. So for us to be strategic or where we are and knowing that all these machines are coming, but for us, we have to outwit the machines. And I have an amazing team. All we do is try to crack the system. So that's been the key and being effective storytelling and really being able to have something that is made that is able to withstand time. And that in everything I can share, everything I do is really allowing for something to be remembered, for it to be impactful enough and for it to become a skyscraper in 10 years' time. And luckily, a lot of our clients are getting bought out by private equity. And I've had enough time doing this about 17 years that I've been able to be fortunate enough to have amazing entrepreneurs that we've been able to work with and scale and they open more businesses. So I've been through this. Seeing the other end of it and being able to really help our clients reach their goals, which is my passion.

And you mentioned lawyers before we jumped on. You also talked about nonprofits, government officials. Do you have a sweet spot of businesses that you serve or that you prefer to serve?

So here's, here's the reality, and not a lot of people say this to you, but the truth is the economy shifts. What people are making money from before, they're not making money from now. For us, I'm very much so a big supporter of small business, but a restaurant that's functioning in California with 33% going to Uber Eats, another 33% going to another entity staffing, there's no way for it to survive. So for us to go from managing 400 doors in California to having limited number of doors because they can't facilitate to be able to pay for the services, This is how we shift. And for us, we do cater to the top 1%. We do cater to the people who are in the Fortune 500. So we do cater with some of the people that are top of the top. So we don't actually work with small, small doors anymore. We don't work with small business, but we do work with the bigger people. Some of the people we work with, Cousins Maine Lobster to Chipotle to different entities that do have the scalability, that do have that footprint that we can actually support. I love my small business owners. I keep them tight in my heart and that's where we were able to come from. But it just doesn't make sense in certain industries because they're not made to survive anymore with the model that's there. So with us, we cater to who needs our help. And right now, legal, aesthetics, government, different things that we can actually be in a supporting role where they need our help. And some businesses, they can't afford what we are able to offer them. And some people, it's okay just using AI for now, where it's not competitive.. But anything that's competitive, anything where you try and actually get viral, anything where you're actually trying to have yourself get into front of people, that's where we jump in and we're able to help.

Well, and let's talk about that because you mentioned some companies that have big names we've all heard of, and you do work with a lot of companies that have visibility, but they haven't turned that into revenue. So how do you take all of the different aspects that you've that we've talked about, the SEO, the PR, the branding, and help turn that spigot on so that they can have the revenue, then they can also pay for more services and they can continue seeing great results.

I think any business is scalable. I think the mindset of the owner needs to be within that same realm. So for me, having scalable businesses that we're able to help create a lot of it is systematic things that are in place to help them get there. But I think with businesses, understanding what the business is and what the growth potential is, that's something that we need to kind of look at. So for me, just reversing on your question, I think your question was to figure out if you have a business, you haven't taken that step, why you should to be able to help your business grow. Was that the question?

Yeah. Yeah. Brands that have visibility, but they haven't turned it into revenue.

So I think the biggest thing is generic doesn't work. Do some social listening. Understand what is helping people answer their questions. Every time we get a phone call here, the person on the other side, their house is on fire. Something is broken. They need a fix or they have a goal they're trying to reach. So for us to understand, be compassionate and help them get to that goal, that's what we do every day. But there's no magic button. And if you go to a company and they just say, what can you do for me? They just give you everything they know how to do. That's not a good client. That's not a good relationship to be in. You really want to understand based on your company what needs to be done for you. And there is no value meal approach. The value meal approach is dying. You will not be successful because depending on your industry, you have to understand how hard you have to push, where people are searching and wanting answers. Are the conversations about your product being had on Reddit? Are your conversations being had happening in Facebook groups and with moms who are making that decision? Are you selling children's services to where the parent can't sleep at night between 1 o'clock in the morning to 7 o'clock because, oh my God, my kid's gonna be held back and they're looking for help? So we see this and we know this. And we also know the biggest, biggest, biggest lawsuits ever claimed, ever claimed, Those leads come in from 2 AM to 5 AM. So there's little things about what is the market doing? Are you listening to the market where the conversations are being had and where people are getting hired? Then you implement services and work that you need to do. For us, that's the main thing we do. We really figure out what is the market asking for? Where is the hierarchy in terms of what's the first question? What's the second question? If you're going to go into surgery, What is something you look for? What's the recovery time? So that tells me if you're looking up the recovery time, you're about to make a decision to get that surgery. So, and that's a possible lead for me to get to you. So what we do, we can work within any industry, but one of the main things that we do is psychology, understanding where the decision is actually being made. Is it made instantly? Is it made 60 days after? Because all these things will allow us to use our tools that we have here. The same way you go look for a mattress on Amazon, then they haunt me for the next 60 days to buy the mattress. There's certain things to where you would leverage different types of services to help that person reach that perfect pizza pie. Because there really is, and I always say this, there's a pizza pie approach. Everyone has different slices, and those slices make you whole. So when we come to us, we look at the pizza pie, we look at what's realistic, and every budget's different. Some people are burning to where they have 10 staff members, they need to get them working, and they're like, I need leads now. Some people are like, I'm okay, I want to wait and I want to have it come over time. So we always have this teeter-totter approach, right? So in the beginning, you need to run ads, you spend extra money to get it running, but then you have long-term goals to have it come organically. If you want to pay, do you get any reviews from your customers, from having referrals come into place? So there are things that we will nurture a client to help them establish it to where they're self-sustainable. And that's something that I really, really push for. And I always educate. I tell people, and my clients laugh at me. I'm like, you're going to fire me in 3 months. You're not going to need me. She was, I don't want to fire you. I don't, I'm like, no, but I want you to be sustainable. So we get this done. We work on something else. I'll grow your business. So for us, that's something we really advocate for is having a plan for short-term, long-term, because the short-term instant gratification doesn't really help you in the long run. Long run. They just give you instant relief but doesn't solve their problem. So we try to solve people's problems, not just put a Band-Aid where you're needing to kind of work with us for life. And we educate our consumers a lot too.

Well, you're talking about a few things here. One is going from the top of the funnel, searching, not quite sure what brand, to building that— to the finding the brand that builds the trust with the consumer. You also though mentioned places that aren't easy to necessarily get a foothold in Reddit. We know that people who are on Reddit, they want to see authenticity. They wanna have real conversations with real people, not just necessarily have brands interjecting all the time unless you do it in a very smart way, right? Same thing with maybe Facebook groups. I've been in a lot of those when my daughter was young where, you know, all the moms are talking about the different products and we're making the recommendations to each other. So how do you convert to, you know, you find the signals, you know where the people are and they're not necessarily things that we think of as places we can traditionally advertise.

Welcome to the party.

Yeah. Right.

There's different ways where you're able to do things, specifically Reddit. I think Reddit is definitely a great avenue and you can run Reddit ads. So Reddit has definitely opened up their backend. We definitely are a Reddit partner. We spend a large volume of money with Reddit. We've actually stopped spending money on Yelp completely and moved our dollars there. We also advocate for our clients to have their people that are visiting them share about what has taken place to be able to give feedback. There really is something on Reddit where they try to keep the community clean, so, and I do not recommend spamming it, but I also know if you're wanting to ask for a review, a testimonial, you should have them placed on Reddit. That is more valuable to you than sending them to Google or Yelp or any of these other entities. It will make a big change. And running ads there does work. It doesn't work for every single industry. Industry. You have to understand, I've been to shows, I've met all the Reddit people and the Reddit community, they're horrible. They talk a lot of smack, they make jokes. They're not horrible. I'm a Redditor too, but there's this sense of sarcasm there that if they can see through it, they'll rip it apart. So make sure if you're coming there, know what your platform is, come proper, they're going to rip you apart. So it's just knowing your platform, how you're going about tapping into that platform, putting correct media there that shows value to me. And that's something I'm gonna tell everybody. Whatever you create, you have your perception, but then the customer's perception. Yeah. Come to the table on the customer's perception. Your life is out of whack if you're doing it the other way, because no one cares about what you care about. They care about what they care about, what their pain points are and what you're gonna help them do. You're creating a piece of media. Who is that gonna help? You're creating something that someone's wanting to share or save to give to their partner, their loved one. That's when you— yeah, I know when a post is going to go viral. Number one way I know a post is going to go viral, from the shares. Some people might not like a post because they don't want other people to see it, but they share it to their significant other, then you know you made it. So there's little tells. So as you're doing things, if it's share— if the sharing is high, it's gonna go viral. If you're adding value into there, are you putting it in a place to where your fish are? Because everything is fishing, right? So let's say you are a speech therapist. Where are those moms in the middle of the night? Facebook. They're older, older audience. You're giving tips on how to do this DIY with your own child. If you're a business executive and you want to be able to tap business to business, LinkedIn. So depending on where the conversation is, depending on where your users are. You need to post on those platforms. Yeah.

So it's not just going out into the void, which I think a lot of businesses do. And you know, that's, they think they have to be everywhere and all things to all people. They're not focusing, like you said, on what is their core customer's problem that they're trying to solve. And this isn't about awareness. This is really about bringing the solution, bringing the advice, bringing the education to them.

This whole example that I will give people, and they need to really think about this, Me and you, we own a battery company, but nobody wants to buy our batteries, but everybody's buying toys. Guess what? We're opening up a toy store to be able to sell our batteries. So come to the table on the terms of your consumer. If your consumer is dying because they have this pain every morning and they have heartburn every day, here's 3 ways to be able to resolve your heartburn. You're able to bring them on with knowledge and information. Right now with AI, to be able to create long-form content, to be able to create anything, it will get found. People will find you. I'm having some of my older blog content from our clients from 10 years ago become top search terms on Google. I'm having old video content that found a 30-minute video that no one would be able to read through, but now Google's finding it, finding that one sentence that was said in it and making it available. So don't be scared, create content, make it accessible to people.

And this isn't necessarily even about refreshing old content. This is purely just taking content that's evergreen, perhaps, right? And has things that are viable that people really need now.

So here's something that I need business owners to think of. If you're in a recurring model business to where if you're working with pregnant women, you know the height of the season, you know when to post when. So just look at your history, look at the trajectory. If there's a lot of weddings and you're a wedding planner, guess you're going to be posting at this time to get them to sign up for you. So there is this understanding of the calendar, what people are looking for, the time of the year, and all those little things that will make you fall into place. Go into the situation knowing that the room is full of people. So this is where the social listening comes in. This is where understanding where the conversation's already being had and assimilating yourself into the space like you've been there for 20 years. And this is something we do and we do this at a rapid rate. And I think users, normal people, you own a business, go and look to see what are the biggest pain points that your consumers are having and help them with it. Help them with the problem. What would be 3 things you can give them that will help them resolve their problem to be able to yield them as a customer.

So talk a little bit, because we, you mentioned AI, which I love to talk about, and we obviously have AI overviews. We have artificial engine optimization. We have SEO. There are people who say SEO is dead, but then we also know you have to have long tail, long form content on your websites because if you're not doing SEO, what do you think that artificial engines are picking up? So can you talk a little bit about how you use these non-siloed strategies of SEO, branding, PR to create that perfect apex, that perfect point where both people and machines are discovering your brand, your product, your service.

So here's a big tell. I'm gonna tell you guys something. If you think that you're gonna go on AI, have AI write content for you and you think Google's gonna find it, good luck. There's something happening now and you'll see it. Google will constantly cut fat off of things. They'll cut the fat. They do it every little bit to be able to make their search not dirty. So if you have a website with 200 pages of all AI-written content, that page will rank and then instantly, doo, whoop, gone. Every piece of content our team writes, we use an AI checker against to make sure that the content is not AI-written. Because Google has its own checker. What's gonna happen, you're not seeing it now, but you will, you're gonna have AI search and an actual search. So content, video content that's made with AI is gonna be separated out. Blog posts that are made with AI is gonna be separated out because that's only for them to keep it clean. So you're gonna see this separation of AI written content to human written content. You're gonna see this separation of people seeking more distorted, pixelated videos compared to super polished videos.

Wow.

Because then they're able to see, well, that's an actual video. So this, this whole conversation of is that AI is a constant. So we're seeing numbers do well for less polished errors in the video. It does better now. So you have to understand AI is coming. You can use it within certain limitations, but us as a company with all the clients we work with, This was a really big decision we made. Do we go fully AI with our content? Do we actually keep our content writers? I'm so happy that we did it the right way because we knew what Google was going to do because they always do it the clean way. So we kept our content writers on. We didn't let them. So we kept them on and all of our content we're doing is being written by a human being, is useful, is not AI driven that we know is now failing. So there is a time to use AI. But there's also reality of if you bring something that's machine written into a system, that machine is gonna read and write or reject. So there are ways and times that you use it. I think there is a reality, and I can give you some tips on how AI can be used real time that won't hurt you is, for instance, your calendar that you have. Take a screenshot of your calendar, put it on AI, say, hey, I wanna be the most badass, podcast interviewer in the world, based on my schedule that I have, how would I be able to edit my calendar to be able to achieve it? And it might be your 1-hour meeting turns to 45 and 15 minutes goes towards prepping for something or doing cold outreach. But the whole notion of having a set of eyes look at something that they're looking at every single detail, because that's, that's what they're supposed to do. Use those tools like that. Have what you're doing every day get complemented by these little tips and tools. And for us now, we're like, oh, that seems so simple, but it's just having that emphasis of support and having that secondary. It's—

I feel like I'm seeing this huge shift because on one hand, we are trying to get small businesses to use AI in their processes so that they can spend less money on certain areas and actually hopefully make money and stay in business. Because I know that's something that you mentioned, it's really hard. On the other hand, I, I teach at USC and I teach grad school for digital media and digital social media, and we're having our students use more AI because they need to understand how important it is to still have critical thinking. And so I've, I had one student meeting and the student said, I feel like I'm just copy and pasting. I'm like, no, no, no, you're not supposed to be copy and pasting. You're asking questions to see, is, are the You know, is the information you're getting back the information that you thought you were? Is this what you thought, you know, is this really your brand? Is it not? You have to keep asking questions, refining, but it needs to come from you, not from, you're not just taking and regurgitating what AI is telling you to do. Are you seeing that a lot with some of the clients that you've worked with? And I'm sure there's a huge education component. I, I could tell you have a lot of thoughts right now.

So decision-making skills are dying. Mm. I have, we have about 95 people that work on our team. We have about 15 people that are here in the office. We have the White House here. So decisions are made here. Common sense is not common sense. What you're talking about is a reality. I think the age demographic that's about 10 years younger than the kids are going to school right now with you, they are losing the ability to make decisions. They are able to, and it's, somebody said this seems a perfect example. It was like the old Nintendo games. Where you couldn't hit pause. You got to play the whole game through, get frustrated. Then they have cheat codes. Now you can have a memory thing you paid to be able to get ahead. We are cheating people to be able to help them make good decision skills, cope with those things. So I'm seeing it now real time here. So the reason I started nodding my head and I'm having, I just had one of our clients add a new staff member on and holy ravioli, this guy is just using Claude to answer all of his questions. I'm like, you need to add ADA compliance to your website. You're going to get sued. No, Claude says I don't need to do that. I'm just like, okay, let me go ahead and date this, letting you know that I sent this to you and you're covered because I'm advocate. So there's this issue of having Claude be God, but we're seeing it now. So even people that are writing books and the book is looking at, okay, I'm going to reference this note from this book. There is no book. So you're having AI have hallucinations and it's happened all the time. So these hallucinations are becoming real. So I, this was a perfect example. A lawyer was just disbarred because he submitted something. He goes, there's 12 statues. AI made a 13th statue that was added in out of nowhere. So you have this hallucination that's happening within AI. That's insane. So the ability for AI to implement is very scary on the medical side, super scary. Some of these other things that one mishap. So the hallucination thing is utterly scary for me. I don't know what the youth is going to do in terms of work. You know, I had my nephew tell me, what do you want to do? He's like, I want to be a surgeon. I'm like, maybe you can sew a leg back on. You'll grow it and sew it back on the way things are going. But it's just this reality and this hardship that I know that some of the new generation that are kind of going into this workspace, what are they going to do? So that definitely is a thing. I think decision-making is a really hard thing. I think for people to understand what prompts to put in to be able to get the response that you want, because you can ask it and it'll tell you saying, hey, am I stupid? Or hey, am I not stupid? It'll tell you both ways based on how you ask. And people don't know that. And it's kind of scary to where we get calls from people saying, I just made this important note. I need to make sure the White House sees it. AI is telling me to contact the White House. So you always have this AI being a supportive, like coach telling you, do it, do it. But it's at extreme rates. So we see it at every end. So I do think having the proper approach to asking the questions to get you to where you need. Also to say that have common sense. Not everything is what AI tells you. Make sure you double check, check check the references because we are seeing these hallucinations causing some really big problems.

I just, I can't get the example you gave of the person who said, oh, AI told me I don't need to be, you know, compliant on my website. And that, I mean, yes you do. There are a lot of people who are going around and suing people whose websites are not compliant. So I'm just, baffled that people are taking it to that extreme. I mean, I'm not quite— I'm baffled, but I'm also not surprised.

There's only so much I can do with certain things, and all I can do is just guide, help. And sometimes you have certain situations where they're letting Claude run their company. It's just not gonna work well with them. All I can do is advocate and help. I can't force anyone to do everything, but this is a perfect example of just having AI be your reasoning, which, which it should be a part of it but not the main one.

Yeah, I mean, even in podcasting, I've listened to podcasts and had to go, is this AI? Because the voices don't sound like people, but then it says it's a person. I'm like, okay, I need to do a little more fact-checking myself because I don't want to listen to an AI podcast. I like the real conversations between people. Because, you know, we don't know quite where they're gonna go, and there's a realness to this. And the fact that you're talking about, you had to make a really big decision. You have a lot of employees, you have a footprint all over the United States, including to Hawaii, and you had to make that decision. How much AI are we going to use? And the fact that you said we're going to make it human-based, right? That, I think that's a really important thing that a lot of people need to hear.

You know what, I don't want everyone to hear because then it makes my job harder.

Right.

For me, when everyone says, oh, we're going to use AI, I'm like, yes. So it's one of those things. I think what's going to happen with everybody, I think people are going to have accessibility to more tools, which is amazing. They're going to be able to stand on their own two feet, but there's always going to be that extra. There's always going to be in the same way. I'm sure you drive down the street, you see 50 law firm ads. They can't run status quo and expect to have something. There has to be something that you're able to do extra to get that extra little push. And for us, again, we were at the top 1%. And I laugh every time we hire somebody, we're like, we don't get easy projects. We do not get easy projects, but that's what makes us great because we can get it done. And I was thinking for myself, when the whole room is told no, me and that 5 other percent, that 5% of the room would say, oh, everybody else gave up. Now we're going to go go get it. And that's just what's been my ethos and that's how I've branded. You're never going to find a parking spot behind 5 other cars trying to find a spot. Pave your own road, find your own way, and never take no as an answer. And that's just been status quo and I always stay to that.

Well, and you do have a different approach because I believe that we don't need to have siloed businesses. I do believe in the kind of integration that you have, but there are still companies that solely focus on SEO. That's solely focused on PR, that's solely focused on branding. And so you have a huge competitive advantage. And also the human element, I think, is a huge competitive advantage. Can you talk about what made you decide to, you know, stand your ground on having an integrated system for the businesses that you work with and why that was so important to be baked in from the beginning?

Our clients are demanding of it. Stability in marketing is a necessity. Our clients require for them to come in on Monday, come in on Tuesday, come in on Wednesday with leads to call, to have their businesses drive. Shortcuts, short outcomes. You don't have the full potential which you're able to do. The decisions we made to be able to keep our staff whole, to be able to keep offering this pizza pie approach of all these services that make sense for them and not just doing one specific one has allowed us to be who we are. We are not good for everyone. We are not. We're good for that top 1% that's looking to scale, that's looking to go national, that's wanting to have their business get private equity for them to go live on a yacht for the next 40, 50 years of their life. We are a match to specific people, and these decisions we've made have come with a lot of sacrifices. They were not easy. And when you're dealing with the market to where all your competitors just cut their costs by 60%, But you're still standing strong and you're eating it. But now what's happened? 70% of the businesses around us have died out, have not— have gone from a team of 50 to a team of 2, where we're doing white labeling for 20 to 40% of the other marketing companies in the area because they don't have the foundation anymore. So they're coming to us to do their photo shoots, they're coming to us to do their development, they're coming to us to do their PR. And we don't have competition. They're all friends. We all know each other within the market. Earlier, earlier in my life, I felt competition, but now we're all supporting, we're all helping. There is no competition. So we do white label for a lot of other companies that have lost their footing. So with us, it was that hard decision of making sure we don't restructure, we don't fire everybody, we stay strong, we fight the fight. And luckily we've been able to pop up from the other end and people are still utilizing us, they're still pulling us in to help them, and we're scaling every day.

You talked a little bit about the differentiation between the SEO and the work that we'll do for machines versus people. Can you talk about the PR landscape? Because the media landscape has also changed so much.

PR is more important than SEO. For an entity to talk about you that has a high regard, that has a high quality score, that will do more for you than SEO and placement, everything else. Because you have to understand, AI has 15 to 20 platforms it uses to justify what you're saying. And I don't know if you knew that or not, but it is. It's YouTube, it's medium.com, social media platforms, TripAdvisor, things that you wouldn't think would be, but they are. Reddit, places where you have user-generated content and you're having people work and it's able to dig, dive, and figure out what's the most relevant. So if you're posting on those top platforms, you'll show up, you'll start ranking, information you have to share will show up.

Yeah, and it sounds like you're also saying if other people are talking about you on the right platforms, you're getting the reviews, you're getting the credibility from other people signaling that you are who you say you are and that they trust you.

There's something right now about you screaming from the mountaintop, I'm the best, but there's a reality of having trusted sources cover you. So for me to be on CNN, to be on Spectrum Radio, for our team to win an award, all these little things are things that are actually above the fold. And that's why I'm saying it's above the fold now. So all this content we're creating, these visuals we're able to share on the look up our company, it's able to say, oh, and they also have this. The same way right now when you go into AI, you put in a request, it gives you output. Put in a request, that's the way normal life is. But now, if you look at it, it says, who's the best company? They give you a list. You want me to go deeper and give you who's the most award-winning? Who specializes in this? For us, we know what those searches are. We know how they're searching. So if I'm going to pick a topic for a podcast I'm going on, I'm going to cover a topic that makes sense for my customers. So there is a reality of us understanding how AI is working, placing the content for it to get picked up and for it to get indexed and kind of seeing the outcomes.

Yeah.

We're having a lot of fun right now.

It sounds like it. Yeah.

The AI is rewriting the book. So the book right now is getting rewritten. We're getting more visibility in places we never thought were possible. And our clients are rewriting words in the dictionary because we're taking ownership of words that are pre-known. Like, I'm competing against Jamba Juice for certain things. So we're doing national things that we're able to really craft the surface.

What's been the hardest part about scaling? Like, when did you decide you wanted to start moving into other cities? And, you know, how do you maintain that? Because you've said different energy, different markets. But you want to maintain the quality and consistency of your brand.

Number one difficult thing, staffing. No matter what you do, no matter who you are, staffing is the number one thing that will either help you scale or deplete you to the point that you cannot move anymore. Bottom line, I think staffing and even from going to the shows and one of the things I'm going to give a tidbit to you guys so you guys are able to kind of use this in your own world. The staff you have now, grade them A+, A, B, C. C's gotta go. B's got to get trained. A needs a little bit of a push to become A+. A+ you hold on to, you keep them close. Another way, the people you have in the positions they're in, if that position was open, would you rehire them? Simple dimple, that's it. Ask yourself those simple questions. If you don't make those decisions quick, you're going to pay for it and you're going to burn. So those simple things of staffing really does help. Make sure you're having that be secure, having that be in a good place. The other access point in terms of when we made the decision to scale to other parts of the country, it happened in two parts. I think our second biggest market we went into was New York. The third biggest market we went to was Hawaii. New York was because we just have a lot of clients there. I saw the opportunity there and actually moved there for a little bit. I was there for about 2 years. I aged a lot during that time because I was flying back. I knew all everyone in the Delta lounge on Fridays when I was flying back. I knew everybody. So it was just some giving up a little bit of my life, but making sure we have a foundation in New York. Hawaii, my wife is from there, so our roots are there and we have really good relationships. We work with the state government, we've worked with farms, we worked with things that I didn't think was possible growing up in LA. It gave me a new outlook on things. Texas market is growing. We have clients there. We have a, have a new startup that's going to be launching there. I'm super excited about. And Florida, Florida has a lot of market. We have a lot of restaurants that have kind of taken their brand there, and we have a lot of real estate that we work within there, med spas as well. So we've kind of moved into different markets where we've seen the value of it. And for us, and this may be selfish, but We want to pick and choose our clients. We say no to about 75% of people that call us, and that— we will guide them, we'll tell them, here's a better option, we'll give a referral to someone else. But we really pick and choose because we want to be able to step into a project and actually upscale. We can see it being sustainable 12 months down the line, not just for the first 2 to 3 months. It's not worth it for me to work on something I know is going to fail. I don't have it in me to do that. So we really pick and choose, and advocate and push to help them get to that success. Because if they're successful, they're gonna keep you on board. Simple as that.

Well, you're in a different position now, I'm sure, than you were when you first started, right? You probably had to do a little more of like taking clients on that you realized weren't a good fit. So what advice would you give to somebody who is looking at scaling their, you know, maybe they have the staffing part right, but there are other elements I'm sure that you can get wrong that you have to look at when you're scaling a company, when you're scaling a business?

Add more zeros to your dreams.

Hmm.

Whatever you're ambitioning, whatever you're doing, add 5 to 8 more zeros to what's possible. You're only going to get paid what you think you're supposed to get paid. That's all messed up. You need to add some more zeros to it. Ego should not be a part of your decision-making. I'm a little older now. But every single job, and I told every single person here, I won't make you do something that I wouldn't do. So right now, I don't want to travel as much as I did. The team travels, but I've done it. I know how it is. I'll do it when I have to. There's certain things that you have to do to be able to make your business grow. There has to be some pain before the light. You have to go through hardships. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. So every time it was 4 AM and I was crossing that bridge over into New York, going into different part of New York to do a shoot at 5 AM, freezing cold, asking myself, why am I doing this? This was why. So don't be scared about suffering for what you love. And you will do well if you put in the time. Your darkest days will become the brightest days you have because you're able to reflect and solidly able to get through it. And everything's within your own fingertips. Trips. Like, and I tell that to people, I started this just showing up. Show up. Every single opportunity I've gotten, I've shown up and I just smiled my way through it, and it's opened up infinite doors. So show up. What's the worst thing that can happen? I always tell myself that. What's the worst thing that can happen? What's the best thing?

Great reframing. I love the concept of adding a lot more zeros too, which can be really hard for people to to grasp. But I also wanna talk about the fact that you turn down most of the business that comes your way because you know who you can work with, you know who you can really find success for. Have you ever taken on a client in recent times that you've had to fire because you thought they were the ideal client, you thought they were the right person, but then because they were using AI for all their decision-making or because of some other reason, you had to say—

I did have actually that, that client, we did let them Oh, because we weren't able to communicate to them. They were just, they were going to explode. And I just couldn't. I'm like, this is not in a place to where if we tell you your house is on fire, you got to take that fire out because then you're going to come back a week from now. So that did happen, that exact situation. We had another client that we were just, we actually onboarded. And after we onboarded them, I was going to send a letter to them saying, hey, we can't do business like this. We need to let you go. Simple fact of if we're not able to get what we need to make you successful, we're not going to stay on board to watch this thing crash. And for that, for that to be a problem later, we will raise the flag right away and move ourselves out of it because we don't have the time. I don't have a million-person team. And what we do is very strategic. And if the, if the person on the other end is not understanding, they're not supporting this and you know it's going to fail, these things are not taken. We don't want to be a part of it. Bad money is bad money. Having a contract that you can't fulfill, that's awful. We don't have a revolving door with our clients. People that work with us, they will work with us. They will have our contact information that they can reach out to us. We have that relationship. And that's the difference. That's the difference. We're not here saying yes to everybody. And I tell my clients, I'm not going to say yes to you. I will fight for it for something that has value for our business. And I make that term our business. There's things that I will do that's a detriment to my business, but to help my clients because I know they will be with me over time. I still have my clients from 17 years ago. I still have my clients from 17 years ago.

Yeah, that's really amazing. There are not a lot of people who can say that, I feel like. I want to go back to storytelling, right? Because this is something we talked about at the beginning. So how does the power of storytelling for building authority play into your data-driven approach?

So the data is one thing, the person or individual is another. So we have different personality types. You can't force someone to be someone. I can't force someone to do a TikTok dance if the guy is just won't do a TikTok, but some people are dying to do it. So one thing is understanding the palette, or like in terms of the palette, who we're working with, what they're comfortable doing, and then incorporating our campaigns. How it makes sense. If my client is very comfortable with doing content, amazing. I will have a team there every single week. We will do content creation with him every single week. If he's not, we're doing faceless videos. We're having him to give me a 5-second thing saying, Hey, I'm da da da, contact me, da da da. But everything else before is done there. So depending on who we're working with, we will incorporate a campaign that benefits them. I have certain companies, they have 200 people on the floor. I go in there, I can get a shoe and I can get every single color of the rainbow where people can see the people, they can see themselves a part of them, which helps. Sometimes they don't have that. Sometimes I have to work within another manner. So it's really depending on who we have. The keywords, the goals, those things don't change. My customers, they don't change. I just may specialize in helping someone a little bit more because I have this special talent or have an access point. So it's really, it's two, this doesn't change. My customer base doesn't change. The person that's trying to step into it, they're always a little different. And I've learned I can't change somebody. I have to work within what their comfort zone is. And everyone's different.

Yeah, that is true. We can get people more comfortable speaking sometimes, but sometimes you can, you can always tell when it doesn't quite hit and it's not going to work and move on.

We know instantly. In a lot of our work, we do a lot of relationship building when we go meet our clients because media is such a big, big access point for us. So we understand where we are. We're not going to put ourselves in a position to fail. We will always. Coach, support, help, do multiple rounds before we say, hey, we're going to shift. But it's just a reality because at the end of the day, we're the Kevlar that goes on our client's body. So if the shots come out, they don't go through because we have something sustainable, something beautiful. We always want to be able to present the client as Fort Knox, unbreakable, uncrackable. And we have to do that. And even if we're given 3 photos to use or a million photos, we have to make it work. Yeah.

Oh, that's an interesting philosophy, but I think it talks and speaks to how dedicated you are to your client base. So I'd love to hear, what are you seeing in the market? What do you think we're going to be seeing if you can look at a crystal ball in the next 2, 3, 5 years down the road for this landscape?

Blue collar workers are going to be our champions. They're going to be the next cleaners. If you are a contractor, you're a plumber, you're an electrician, You're about to do amazing numbers. I think AI is not in a place right now to help facilitate that yet, but it will. I know in a little bit you're going to buy a piece of land, you're going to buy a little, this is the design I want, and then they're going to go pour it out. And it's good. It was further ahead. I think blue collar work is going to be the thing that people champion in terms of needing them, wanting them, not having enough of those people. I think we're about to have a huge discrepancy with terms of people needing work and what's available. So find your lane and find it quick and become an asset to somebody somewhere because this shakeup that's about to happen is severe. Some of the job applications I'm getting are ridiculous. I'm having executives, producers submitting for social media roles where they're overly, overly qualified, but they're sitting at home for 9 months. Can't drive Uber anymore because of driverless cars. So the market for certain positions is— so run. The book is being written. Run. Figure out your place, how you can make yourself an asset to a company or a workforce now because the shift is happening. We're getting more and more calls from companies saying, hey, I'm getting rid of— I have 200 staff, we're about to become 120 staff. Help me do that in the next 60 days. It's happening. But this is the thing, the same thing with COVID When COVID happened, I had business owners that were shriveling up. What do I do? Then I had business owners saying, hey, let's make $20 million. And they did. And during that time, we were more being utilized for people that are wanting to make their businesses run than ever before. We have businesses that we scaled during that time. Same thing now with AI. Our business is scaled because our 17 years in business, AI can go pull all those accolades. You can see that we did a toy drive in Hawaii for the Shriners. We did a toy drive for NYPD. Every holiday, every Christmas, we do something with NYPD. We do toy drives. Things that we've done, now we're getting our accolades, which is amazing. And I always pitch to other people, don't be a secret. Share, document what you're doing. You don't need a social media person. Document what you're doing. Just document it. If you're actually doing the work, document it.

Yeah. Well, you've given us a lot to think about. I definitely agree on the blue collar worker. Those jobs, I'm seeing it, that we don't have enough people going into service positions that really need it. Skilled service where you can make a good income immediately after leaving the trade, you know, getting into the trades. It's something really valuable. But for the other side of businesses, we need to remember that we do need to build real authority. We need to bring trust, right? We need to bring strategy and we need to make sure that we are sharing that story, not just using the analytics, not just using the AI, that we're using real storytelling to share how we're going to solve problems for our customers and consumers. So this has been really fun. I think you've given us a lot to think about, a lot to chew on, Ben. And I do wanna ask, you've given us a couple along the way, but do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, a family motto, words that continue to inspire inspire you to pour in everything that you do?

I just heard this, be the person you needed on your darkest day. Ooh. So it gives me tingles when I hear it because it goes waves and I can come up with a big marketing thing, this, that, but that, that's what drives me to help people and become that person that you needed during your darkest day. And it just resonates with me and I really advocate for people to be there. Give that hand to that person next to you. In this world, to tell someone you believe in them, you won't believe what that will do for someone. And believe in people, help people. It will really come back full circle.

Well, you are that person. I see how much you believe in keeping really good people on part of your team, right? Making sure that we have the humanity, not just the AI. That we're still using the brilliance that come— can only come from the human mind. So I, I appreciate everything you've shared with us. You clearly, you're such a hard worker. You're very humble and you've been able to build a beautiful business. So Ben, thank you for sharing your journey, your business with us today and helping us think about, are we using the right strategies? Are we showing up in the right places? Uh, are we making sure that we're still using PR, branding, and search as part of our strategies, and we're not just looking at AI to do everything for us. We will have all your links in the show notes. So thank you to everybody who's watching this episode, who's listening to it. It makes a difference. Share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it. And of course, again, we'll have all of Ben's links in the show notes for you to learn more about him and his company and just continue getting a little better every day. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.