Ep. 11 Everyday Entrepreneur Hersh Rephun

Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of The Everyday Entrepreneur. I'm your host, Paul H. Flowers Jr., and this is the Pulpery Place Podcast Show. Today, amazingly excited, this gentleman has a tremendous amount of history, stories, and quite frankly, personality, as we've had the chance to connect prior to the show. And we'll get a little bit into what we connected on. But ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome to the show Mr. Hersh Rafoun. Hersh, how are you, my friend?

I'm great, Paul. It's great to see you. Great to see you again.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And on this beautiful day, we'd love for again, you as the person to just go ahead and get us started with a little bit of where you've been, where you're at, and where you're going.

Where I've been, where I've been, where I'm at, and where I'm going. It is interesting because, because I do often bring, bring this up, uh, you know, I work in the personal branding space and, um, and I often say that, you know, where we're at right now is, you know, is obviously people will say live in the now and I'd be like, yeah, you should live in the now, but the now doesn't really mean anything without context. So without looking back and trying to make sense of where you've been and looking forward as like, okay, where do I want to go now? You know, the present doesn't— it doesn't even mean anything, if that makes sense.

Drop it in the first 30 seconds.

Come on. Awesome. Well, so, you know, I started with— I like to say, although I've never said it before, but I've told the story before, but I would say that I started my career at 7. Because at 7, I realized I was— I played the Scarecrow in a second grade production of The Wizard of Oz. And even though I'm not an actor presently, or even really in show business, although I did kind of a foray into show business, it was— I took it so seriously. I had memorized the whole movie, The Wizard of Oz. We used to, you know, we didn't have it on like, you know, there was no streamers back then. There was no movies on the, you know, And so I had seen it once a year and maybe in the theater when they had a revival or something, but I knew it by heart. And the script for the play was verbatim the script from the movie, which I love. And, you know, I just felt like this was a thing that I could do. You know, I knew I could do it. And I think that that's a feeling that we chase a lot in our lives. You know, that feeling of, I know I can do it. It's great to try things that we've never done. But there's also a sweet spot where you feel like, like I was helping other people. This, this should have been an indicator of what I was doing professionally. I, I would help the other actors with their lines. I would— I knew all their lines, right? Because I knew the whole play by heart. And so I would coach them, not in an annoying, you know, precocious little kid way, but in like a quiet, friendly, you know, private way. And I would go on later to represent artists, directors, composers, editors, visual effects artists in the commercial world, in the advertising world. And I was like the OG kind of PR guy in that space in New York. There were no PR firms dedicated to representing artists in the commercial space. And but it was a natural fit for me. So I did that. And, and that was what led to being a creative director, writing ads, being a copywriter. But I always would go outside the lines. Like, I, I didn't want to go to work in an advertising agency. Because I felt like I, I don't know, I just resisted that. I, I leaned toward entrepreneurism at every turn without ever even knowing the word or even, even thinking that's what I wanted. I, I would think I wanted to entertain, so I would do stand-up comedy. I would think I wanted to, um, you know, write what I want to write, uh, and so I would be a screenwriter. I, I, I wanted to champion artists and creative people. And so I created a firm for it. And so it was like, I didn't think I was an entrepreneur. I just thought, oh, I'm being creative, or I'm working with the kind of people I want to work with. But lo and behold, all these years later, I'm realizing, yes, this— there's a lot of people afflicted with this.

Funny you call it an affliction.

Yeah.

And so clearly, this is one of those early memories that really gave insight that you were going to be in this space and that this would truly become your life's work. So let's talk about your life's work. And we're going to come back again, obviously, to some of the more monumental moments along the path. I mean, you've— you're the CEO and founder of YES! Brand. Can you tell us about the name and some of its origins? And really what YES! Brand is all about?

Yeah, YES! Brand comes from the yes and rule of improv comedy. I also used to do improvisational comedy. And It simply means that when you're doing a scene with somebody and they give you a crazy suggestion, you know, um, let's see, I want to use a new, use a new one. They give you a crazy suggestion like all the houses on the block are levitating 100 feet off the ground. You don't say, no, they're moving around in circles right where they are. You know, you don't want to change the story completely. You want to build on the scene. You want it to get bigger and bigger and funnier and more ridiculous. So you always say, yes, you know, yes, they are levitating and there's a mouse on top of every weather vane, you know, you know, to dropping mouse poops on that, you know, could be anything because it challenges your imagination. And so when I, when I wanted to create a company where I would work with brands, in my case, there's always a personal brand involved. There may be a business name or a small business, but the person that I'm working with, the client, their image, their face, that's a large part of it. So I wanted to do that with them. They come in and tell me their story, and I'm going to take it and interpret it, refine it, help them build on it. But I'm not going to say, no, no, no, no, no, we're going to— you're going to be this. Here's what you're going to be. You know, and a lot of times we will look outside of ourselves to try to find out what we're supposed to be, instead of looking inside. That—

when I hear that, I'm recently reminded of some conversations had, where taking responsibility as an internal thing, taking control of one's own mind as an internal thing, as opposed to being at the effect of someone else's cause, right? Being the victim or being the one that has to have basically some external force to act upon you. And that's huge. Now, in brand development, when you're talking about a person developing their personal brand, how do you bring their conscious to that state where they're able to realize that they're in control of their brand, not the company name, not the clothes or whatever the case may be, not anything per se external, but them as a person, as a being, right? Who they are is responsible for their brand.

Well, you know, I love the way you ask that. I, I really have a kind of a sneaky way of doing this because for the reason you describe, I mean, you know, it's— I, I want people to be unapologetic about, about who they are and what they're trying to do and if they're different, if they think differently, you know. But in order to do that, you have to figure out, well, what— where did these thoughts— where did this come from? Like, where did this impulse to do this come from? And so I go back in their, in their lives. And this comes from, you know, just being a podcast host and asking people about their lives, you know. So tell me about your childhood. That's not when you meet— when you meet somebody at a, at a mixer or something and And they say, all right, I'm Paul H. Flowers Jr., you know, what was your childhood like?

Right.

You know, you can say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I go back and I'm like, just like I did with the Wizard of Oz story just now, I'll go back and I'll say, so, okay, because if I start where you're at and I get a sense of where you're at, and then I got to go back and I dig a little bit, then, um, then I'm likely to find out roots, causes, sources for impulses— good, bad, and different— blockers, things you may have, and all that stuff. While it, while it, you know, and I do refer to it as brand therapy, right, as holistic kind of brand therapy. I'm really, I'm really getting into it with you, and that's why I love what you do with your show and kind of you know, making it about the human experience and not just a business versus a, you know, a life, you know, is that it allows me to create a picture of them that they will also understand. Because a lot of times we're, like I said, we're trying to please, we're trying to, you know, we're competing in a marketplace on this very external level, right? You know, I mean, I mean, in some ways it's good. We have our LinkedIn profiles, we have this, we have that, we have, you know, we're, we're, we're on Substack, we publish, we, you know, I get it. Of course, a lot of it is externalized. But what are we externalizing? Right? We're externalizing something deep And we don't want to lose it in the translation. And I think a lot of people, when they— one of the main complaints I hear when people come to me for help is, why does my website, why does everything I write about myself sound like everybody else? You know? And I say, well, you're influenced by what everybody else is doing. And you also think you have somehow in your head that everybody else is doing it right. And then you're doing it wrong, you know. So, and then you have to be like them in order to— yeah, you got to be like them. I gotta be, I gotta be like them in order to win, which is a very— and I, and I have gone through it. I've gone through it myself. Oh, I get it. I have to be like that. I have to be that.

Well, let's, let's dig in. I feel like I should be on your couch, but we're gonna, we're gonna flip the script a little bit. I want to put you on the couch and Okay, question to go a little bit deeper in that. So sure, when did you first get that sense that you had to develop your own style and your own methodology versus being like someone else or being like the others?

I, I think it happens on a lot of different levels, you know. Like I say, I had this entrepreneurial mindset without Like, I didn't think that I cared at all about business. I thought I was an artist and therefore you'd have like a business manager. You wouldn't even care. You wouldn't even know what you got paid or whatever it was. You wouldn't do any math, you know? But what I did realize was that I was— the first time I realized it was when I was drawing And my mom said to me, and I was probably 5 or something, and my mom said to me, you always draw outside the lines. She didn't say it as a criticism. She just said, you always draw outside the lines. And I would literally like draw, you know, let's say the picture that you were coloring in was a clown, right? So I would draw the clown and I would draw a balloon, let's say, that he's holding, or, or, you know, a stick or a card trick, or I would do something like that. And I, and I, and I think that was the first indication that, that I wasn't really going to fit into a certain mold. And it doesn't— what's interesting about it is it doesn't feel to me like I don't fit in. Like, I don't feel like I don't fit in. I just, when push comes to shove, I just don't. And people will say, oh, you don't fit any kind of mold, you know. But those were the indications that, you know, as much as we want to feel safe and accepted, We are who we are, is the bottom line. We are who we are.

Well, I really enjoyed that. A couple things from that. One, you had a supportive system around you. Essentially, mom was encouraging to a degree versus condemning that you have to keep it inside the lines. And when we look at that too, you see an additive type of personality, someone who takes what's there and expands upon what is. And I think it's really important for— though this isn't the parenting segment of the show— to talk about the familial ties of a person's development. So I definitely appreciate you opening up and sharing about that. So in the same vein of family, how has your family life helped you to build, again, your brand on today?

Well, really, I will say the one thing about, about the parent, the parent aspect and the support system is that, you know, I did get that from my parents. I would definitely say that, that neither of my parents took a cookie-cutter approach to life. My grandparents had similar, uh, you know, my, my mother's father was a career officer in the, in the U.S. military, um, but so obviously he, he had— he was a commander, he had discipline, all of those things, but he was not a— he was a leader. And, you know, these are little lessons, you know, like he passed away long before I was born, but I, but I would see every morning his photo on my mom's dresser, right? So like that, those memories become ingrained. So anyway, those examples just become really ingrained over time, more than a lesson like you might read in a book of lessons, you know. So there, that's, that's something interesting. But as far as, uh, you know, my career and my, and my family life and how they're— how they intersect, I would say that, that when I became a parent and I was young, I was about 23 when, when my first son was born. And so it was kind of overwhelming, I think, you know. I got married young. It was not— we were not ideally suited to one another, you know, because we were young. And it's like we, you know, we grew in different directions. So you have that. That adds to the mix. But everything becomes about, you know, the impact you're having on these, these little humans. And, and I felt like if I was miserable in my life, whether it was my marriage or my, or my job or whatever, if I was miserable, they were going to be miserable. There was no way to to mask my misery. And I felt like that if I thought that would work, you know, I would do it in a way. Like, you know, and I'm talking about, you know, when you feel like, well, okay, if I was pursuing screenwriting and I was making some progress, but I wasn't making a living at it. So I had to do, you know, jobs, other jobs. I was working in an electronics store. I was, you know, doing things to pay the bills. And that was challenging, sometimes really deadening. But I felt like misery is not the answer. Like, that's just not the answer. I— now, at the same time, complete self-indulgence is not the answer either.

Right, exactly. It's got to have that balance, right?

Right. So, so I would say that that's been the, the biggest influence, is that I want to show them that, that your passion and your commitment can, can bear fruit and is a healthier way for an entire family unit to exist.

Absolutely.

And people are encouraged and, and supported and feel that way and stick to what they're trying to accomplish. But I also felt like, okay, sometimes we got to do things we don't want to do. Sometimes we have to take gigs we don't want to do, or we got to go down a different path, or we got to, you know, we got to figure out a solution. And it can get messy, and the messiness is, you know, preferable to misery. That would be the quote that I wanted to pull up. I prefer mess to misery, right? You know, because that's a fact. And And, you know, I think that's where all— that's where, you know, your core values and your core commitment and all of those personal things that we say we bring to our business are so important. You know, it's the life— the work-life balance that people talk about is something I don't understand because I don't think of it as two separate things that need to be balanced with weight on two sides of the scale. You know, that suggests that, oh, I have a work commitment and a family commitment. I have to balance it. Well, yeah, superficially, that, that is. But what does this work commitment mean? What is the message? What is the lesson? What is the thing? What does this family thing mean? You know, what is the lesson? So I think we have to think of them as their bearing on the other.

Okay. Okay. And with that, now you've navigated this for a while. Obviously, we've again had a little bit of time to connect prior to the show. So you share with the audience, you starting out as a young father, and prior to that, you've got this knack to color outside of the lines. So we've got someone that doesn't necessarily— we'll call it stick to tradition, right? And then you become a father, and then with that particular relationship, father, father, right, a little bit further. And now there's some time in between. Now you're developing a new— into a new era of yourself, right? Different relationship, additional children. You're in fact a father of 5, you share. Yes. Uh, so needless to say, your holidays are pretty busy.

Yeah.

But now, in a father of 5— it's father of 5, you know, grown children and some younger— and then in this new, newer relationship, we'll say, in comparison to previous, as well as dealing with Yes Brand on a day-to-day basis. How do you balance it all?

Yeah, I, you know, I really feel like, to be honest, Paul, I think, I think I let it, I let it take a toll on me in increments. In other words, like, I get up super early. Like, we're recording this at early in the morning, but I, I— and I usually don't record this early in the morning, but I, but I'm, but I'm like, it's not like I— because I'm not awake. Like, I'm like, I'm late. So I get up super early so that I have a couple hours to work before people are up, before people are doing things. Um, You know, I'm a morning person, so I take advantage of that. But I think what happens is that I— my dad made a very big impression on me because he was an attorney. He had his own practice. He was always at our, you know, he was home for dinner. He was, he was always at our plays and, you know, wherever we had to be. And that was part of the reason he had his own business was that he wanted to make his own schedule. And I, and I, I think that was really important to me. And so I have endeavored to, to follow that lead. At the same time, as you mentioned, you know, with, with 5 kids and with the— as they get older, they get spread out, they're all in different places. I feel like it almost has caught me by surprise how— like, I mean, I'm 58. I don't feel like I should be retired now, but I feel like if I were— I have no desire to ever retire, but I, but I feel like if I were, I would have plenty to do just visiting them, going to see them, going, you know, it's like I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't need a work thing. So it's become like I don't have— I have the opposite of— well, I don't have empty nest because I still have 2 kids at home, right? But I have one going to college, so there'll be one at home, you know, for— unless she— unless she goes to college here in town, even, which case she'll probably— she'll be around more. But still, I'm like, you know, I, I have this feeling of Oh man, I would like to be spending all day, just, you know, a little day, a little thing working and then go to this place or that country or whatever it is. So what I have, what I have reasoned is I need to take my show, my business show on the road a little more. In other words, do speaking engagements that are, you know, on the East Coast so I can visit my sons. Both my sons are on the East Coast, you know. My daughter's out of the country. Okay, get some speaking gigs out of the country. Now you're— because both are fulfilling to me. And quite honestly, if you're not working, you know, in my case, I can't just not work. I'm not in that— I'm not in a position to retire. And I think that's part of the entrepreneurial, you know, cycle is that you're not really— I mean, you could if you exit a startup and you do really well, in all likelihood, if you're an entrepreneur, you're going to invest in something else. You're going to take another risk. You're not going to— you're not going to be like, oh, I hit the jackpot on my first. Some people will, but they're not entrepreneurs. They're just gamblers. They're just like reformed gamblers.

So with that, you've got a, again, a story to be told. And part of your continued story again for the next 30, 40, 50 years is helping other people to tell their story. But like you mentioned, as an entrepreneur, sometimes things might get a little, a little tough, right? Unless you are one of those exit millionaire billionaires, which seemingly we tend to produce every 6 months or so, 3 to 6 months in our country. But for you, Hersh, how do you personally stay creative and energized when those down moments hit, right? When life throws a curveball or something, or the burnout like that you mentioned, how it takes a toll on you incrementally. How do you personally stay creative and energized for you so that you can do what you do and really pour into another person?

I'm really glad you asked that, Paul, because number one, I think it's super important and it's universal, right? I don't know that anybody's immune to it. And second, I was thinking about that yesterday because as often happens, you know, stuff comes up and it's like challenging. What am I going to do about this? And what am I going to do about that? And then you like look at the whole list of things and you're like, okay, what, what am I gonna do about that? And then you're— then you— I think to myself, okay, wait a minute, let's just take the reverse view, you know? And it's not so much a half empty, half full, it's Let's look at what I have pulled off, you know, like over my career, or let's look at this win for this client. Let's look at this note that I got, you know, let's look at this kid. Let's look at what they're doing. You know, let's focus, let's focus on some of these other things that aren't, that aren't necessarily this moment. You know, I'm not sitting on a beach watching my kids play in the, play in the ocean, you know, with my daughter and her and her new baby on the sand. Like, that was a moment. That's a moment where you're like, okay, yeah, this is great. You know, that's kind of like that celebratory moment. But it could be a moment that you're not in that moment, but you're sitting there and you're going, hey, I did X and I invested this in the thing and I saw it through and this is what I got out of it. And you just— it's a form of gratitude. But I think it's also a form of self-recognition. That's what I was getting at. I think a lot of us don't give ourselves the recognition we deserve. I, you know, my parents were very humble and I, you know, I associate sometimes recognition with ego and it's not healthy, honestly. So I have to remind myself, you know, you need this self-recognition now because ultimately, who do you believe, right? You believe everybody that tells you that you're great or you believe yourself when you know you feel great about something. Thing. So I may not feel great in the moment about a bunch of things that are making me not feel great in the moment, but I, I have to look inside and say, what, how do I feel about that? What about that? What about this? You know, so much is out of our control, right? I mean, like, so, so many things are beyond our control. Yeah, we certainly cannot worry so much about that which we cannot change.

That's true.

And, you know, and I think these days, you know, we have plenty to be concerned about. It's— but I mean, we can do a lot of things. We can try a lot of things. And I would much rather be a problem solver than, uh, than beat myself up over something I can't— that I literally can't change, that may even have nothing to do with me but, but affects me, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. So let me ask then, knowing that it seems like you can reframe things essentially as they happen so that it doesn't necessarily keep you down, because again a large portion of your work is pouring into another person, helping to figure out what's there for them. And, and if you'd like to share some— this isn't my direct question about the training that comes with that, being able to really connect with another person. Again, please do. But my direct question is, in terms of beliefs and philosophies, right? What has been one of your, I'll call it, more prominent persistent beliefs that has helped you through the tough times of, again, whether it be personal or professional, those transitions, so to speak?

I think that one of the— one, I mean, one core belief that I, that I come back to all the time is, you know, from the Diary of Anne Frank, where she, you know, said that Ultimately, you know, she believes that people are good, you know, and yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust, the Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the 6 million Jews who perished. And obviously, as a Jewish person, that's something I can relate to having You know, all my great-grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust. And I often say, like, if you would— if you're meeting somebody and you're sharing about your life and you say, well, what, you know, what happened, you know, in your life? You say, oh, well, all my great-grandparents were murdered. That sounds like some kind of, you know, crime scene or something horrific. But if it— if it's— but if whether we're talking about, you know,, any, any social ill or any, any mass atrocity, right? We somehow make it like, oh, that's an event, that's not— that didn't happen to a human being. But it, but it did happen to, to, to our families, human beings, right? Yeah, quite a few human beings, right? So, so, you know, uh, when I think about that And then I think about Anne Frank saying, you know, at their core, humans are good, gives me a tremendous amount of hope because I believe it to be true. And just as people have the propensity for evil, they have the same people have the propensity for good. That's what I think we have to remember. So someone who is behaving horribly is also on some level a victim, right? They're a victim of fear, they're a victim of, of hate, they were a victim of abuse, they were withheld love. You know, that doesn't excuse their behavior, but that same person No matter how bad, right? And some people are really bad, but no matter how bad, they could be or could have been good. And that's the thing that I think keeps me going in those challenging times from a position of, you know, just my belief system.

Sounds like an optimist at heart. And with that, I've got a really interesting question for you. So, I mean, you bring up the Diary of Anne Frank and Holocaust as, again, we know that that part of history took place. And I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit as a person who is a branding expert. So feel free to yes brand this next question, right? Really put into it. Who and what you are at the core. Again, I should say professionally speaking, uh, at the core, um, if you could rebrand anything in the world, like an event, right, a country or movement, what would you rebrand and why?

Oh, wow. Wow. Well, the, the, the first thing that I should say, and this is, this is, this makes it so much easier even though I don't have an answer completely yet, but I will say that my book, Selling the Truth, the whole notion of selling the truth means that even if you're rebranding something, you're not pretending it's something else. You're not spinning it into some other thing. You're not weaving it into something it's not. So whatever I'm rebranding, I would be either taking a truth that people don't yet know and emphasizing that, or I would be showing another aspect or another point of view of the product or the person that people hadn't seen before. So What I would rebrand, I would maybe rebrand this, the country, the United States of America.

Oh, okay.

And I think that some of the things that come to mind would be that first of all, a story isn't written until it's finished. Right?

Absolutely.

And then the other thing is that anytime you are courageous and are driven by something bigger than yourself and by a desire for, let's say, freedom, for fairness, equity, inclusion, all of these things, the missteps or failures or resistance are not the story. The story is the courage that it took to do something crazy that was unheard of, that wasn't a system of government, let's say, that existed other places. It wasn't the predominant approach to existence. And so rather than focus on the failures, It's focus on the audacity of doing that even, of even trying. And then you can acknowledge the failure much more readily. So you're not saying, "Oh, America, the democracy failed. That democracy doesn't work." Or, "Who needs it? Who needs democracy? Rather have fascism." It's easier. Well, that's a point of view. Fascism doesn't exist out of an unwillingness to be fascist. Right? So it's like they're not fascist against their will. So it's like somebody believes communism. They believe in those theories of those systems of government. So rather than say, oh, it doesn't work, it would be, wow, what an audacious and ambitious experiment that is so challenged for these reasons. And that would be my rebranding effort, wouldn't have to do with the flag and the 4th of July and the, you know, Like, like, this would be a good time to start thinking about rebranding the country because you'd be like, okay, we got a few months until the 4th of July, right? Now, some people would think, oh, we gotta have flags and we gotta have fireworks, we gotta have things. And my approach would be, you know, let's make it a— let's make it a really somber day. Let's, let's make it like a really somber exploration of of what it is to, to come to a moment where you feel like this, this has failed, that this is the end. And then on the, on the 5th of July, let's get back to work. Let's go back and fix it, you know, you know, we could use— we could do the tagline, fix it on the 5th.

That was good. That was good.

Fix it on the 5th. Yeah, but that's how I think. Like, that's how I think. So I think I really did do the yes and stuff, you know? Like, I really did take what you put out there and took something that was in a moment that's stressful and troubled and, you know, I can't speak for everybody in the world, but I, I think it's fairly clear it's a, it's a moment of crisis. And, you know, and to, and to take that and say, okay, first of all, own the crisis. I used to consider doing crisis PR, but I felt like to some extent that was a little too, too on the nose. Like you don't want to take always everything. Something's a problem. Because that, that, that is a tricky territory. But, but anyway, it's, it's not unusual for me to look at something and go, okay, let's own the damage, let's own the problem, let's own the mistake. First and foremost, own that, because it's like anything you're afraid of, it's not as scary as you think. When it's scary is when you try to cover it up, you try to pretend it didn't happen, and you try to make excuses, and that's when your voice gets all high and squeaky, and you, you know, it's not— it's, it's, it's so much harder. It's not even the, the thing about, you know, it's so much easier to remember the truth. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's true, but it's so much easier to fix something, you know, once you admit that it's broken. And if you broke it, you know, think about it this way: if, if someone says to you, uh, hey, Paul, did you, did you, did you break that pencil? And you try to go into reasons that you didn't break it, where you weren't, and you— but instead you say, yeah, yeah, you know, I, I, I, I was trying to write the thing and I just got frustrated with the time and I pushed down and it cracked. Sorry, I broke it. I can get another one, or I, you know, we can tape it, or we can— you know, the other person who was upset, what are they going to do, dwell on how you broke the pencil? You, you took the tension out of it so quickly.

Exactly.

Did you break the pencil? Yeah, I broke the pencil. I'm sorry. I apologize. I apologize for breaking the pencil. And, and by the way, and I, I get into this a little bit in the book where I talk about truth, but I, but I say, you know, if, if you, if you get to it, if you get to it right away, uh, the other person has nothing to use. There's nothing, there's nothing for them to use against you. You're not, you're not creating tension, you're diffusing tension. So it admission of responsibility or culpability is a way of regaining control. And a lot of people don't, don't think of it, of it that way because they think, oh, if I, if I admit that I made a mistake— and I get it, you know, some mistakes are not breaking pencils, some mistakes are bigger, and those are harder. Oh well, this was what I wanted to say, is that if you admit to breaking the pencil, it's going to be a lot easier to admit that you crashed the car. Oh, you know, you know, because, because you're gonna get in the habit of being, of being honest, which I don't pretend is like an easy thing. There's, there's, there— that's, it's why I felt it was worth writing a book about, because I don't think the truth is easy to— sometimes it's not even easy to, to determine, much less, you know, own.

Absolutely. And I think this theme of responsibility tends to continuously come up when I'm connecting with entrepreneurs in these conversations. And I'm really, again, thankful that you did bring in that theme of responsibility. Now, we will definitely have you back on. I know you touched on the book a couple of times. We've got an upcoming segment called Author's Alley, and I'm excited to bring back many of my initial entrepreneurs who have written books, but we didn't really get the opportunity to dive into the book. And namely because every entrepreneur out there isn't an author. And when it comes to authoring something and putting yourself out there in that way, it does take a certain amount of, uh, it takes courage, right? It takes something to put yourself out there for that criticism on the shelves of Barnes Noble everywhere, right? Both digitally and physically. So with that, I definitely want to have you back on. We're coming to the top of the hour here, and just out of respect of time, we're going to start to land the plane with a couple of questions that I had for you. One is very simple, very specific, and for my listeners out there, you may know what this question is already. Hersh, we're just going to lay it on you. Share with us, share with the audience, what's your middle name?

David.

David.

David is my middle name. Yeah.

Now, I've got a slight feeling there's a story or a meaning behind that. Would you care to elaborate on where the middle name came from?

Well, there, there is. David was, was one of my great-grandfather's names. And in the Jewish tradition, you name people after people who have passed. So we don't, we don't name, typically name somebody after someone who's alive. But someone who's passed away, you, you do. And my first name, Herschel, is a name after my maternal grandfather, who, as I mentioned, was a military officer who had passed away before I was born, before when— before my mom even got married. And, and his name was Henry. But, but my mom hated the name Henry, so she needed an H name, and they were going to name me Howard. And her twin brother, her twin brother said, Howard, even Herschel is better than Howard. And they went with Herschel. So that's where Herschel David comes from. My grandfather on my mom's side and my great-grandfather on my dad's side.

I love it. I love it. And family lives on through us. With that, we'd love for our listeners to get a little bit more of you. So if you would share with us your social media, your websites, the best ways for the listeners to continue to connect?

Yeah, the best way to connect on LinkedIn, my name, Hersh Rapun. You probably will see it in the, in the show notes and stuff. And then also YesBrandBuilders.com is where you'll— is my website with the hub of everything. So you can really contact me, find stuff, preorder the book, everything else. So, uh, yesbrandbuilders.com and sellingthetruthbook.com.

Excellent. And I'll make sure to include those links in the descriptions both on the YouTube and all of the podcast platforms. Last but not least, Hersh, this minute is yours to really give to the audience something of value, some words of wisdom, a lasting word to encourage and/or bring them to the light in some way, shape, or form. Just go ahead and talk to our listeners about what's important, something that they can take home.

Well, I want to use some of that time to thank you, Paul H. Flowers Jr., really for, for your thoughtfulness and grace as a host and, and just really taking us kind of in interesting places that, that we haven't, that we haven't been. And to the audience, I would say You know, I enjoy coming up with taglines and, and, you know, banners and clever things like that. But I do the— in addition to selling the truth, I often say to people, love the brand you see in the mirror because number one, Everybody's a brand. You know, we don't necessarily name it after ourselves or have a shingle, you know, but even if we have no business, we are a brand. We're a brand. We're a legacy brand. We will have some mark on the world, or at least we should aspire to. And so the deepest simplest guide you can use is to love the brand you see in the mirror every day. And that means that if a day comes and you get up and you don't love that brand that you see in the mirror and you're like, okay, why is that? Why am I not feeling the love? You know, confront it like we were just saying, you know, go, go right to the heart of it.

Own it.

Okay. I don't love myself this morning. Why is that? You know, what, what do I not love about it? And think in terms of that brand, because being a brand allows you to be a little less emotional, but a little more analytical, and still it's you. So, so that's what I would say. Love the brand you see in the mirror.

Love it. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, you've heard it here first from Mr. Hersh David Rapun. CEO, founder of Yes Brand. And again, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. This has been another episode of The Everyday Entrepreneur. Again, I'm your host, Paul H. Flowers Jr., and this has been a phenomenal conversation here on the Pulper Replace podcast show. Thank you all for listening in. Looking forward to another episode. Bye for now.