December 8, 2025 • 28 mins
This week on The Lazy CEO Podcast, Jane chats to Eugene Healy - brand strategist, educator, and creator whose insights have helped giants like Google, Spotify, and Red Bull cut through the noise. Eugene shares how brands can stay relevant in today’s fast-changing media landscape and why old marketing approaches are failing.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why millennial-focused brand strategies no longer cut through.
- How to build flexible, culturally relevant brand ideas that resonate.
- How to grow strategically without over-relying on short-term projects or constant hiring.
So get ready to press pause and write this all down - this episode is packed full of insights!
Did you miss Part 1 with Eugene? Listen HERE: #127 Eugene Healy: 3 Ways to Make Your Brand Actually Stand Out in 2026.
Connect with us:Follow The Lazy CEO Podcast: @thelazyceo_podcastStay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceoFollow Eugene Healy: @eugbrandstrat
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Lazy Ceo Podcast. I'm Jane Lou. I
escaped the corporate grind in twenty four and started my
own business, Choupo, a global nine figures online fashion brand,
and now I want to share my learnings.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Here with you every Tuesday, so join my conversations with.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
The entrepreneurs behind the iconic brands we all know and love.
In between interview weeks, you'll find me talking about hot
topics that fascinates me in the world of business and
personal development, alternating with help my Small Business episodes where
I deep dive into a small business every month to
help them grow. And why the lazy ceo You ask, Well,
(00:42):
give a lazy person a problem, they'll find the simplest
way to solve it.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Hey, potty fam.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
This week on the Lazy Ceo Podcast, Eugen Healey joins
me to talk about why Millennial marketing and Branding playbook
is coming to an end. Eugen, Here's a branch as
you can soult an educator and creator who helps global
brands like Google, Spotify, and Red Bull navigate cultural chaos.
Eugene has such a wealth and knowledge and just know
so much about brand I'm absolutely obsessed with his content.
(01:12):
He has a massive following of over four hundred thousand
for his insights on branding and culture. He knows how
founders and business leaders can build brands that can actually
cut through today's fragmented media landscape. In this episode, you'll
learn why lifestyle driven millennial brand strategies no longer cut through,
how to create flexible brand ideas that their creators execute
in their own way, why being consistent and making a
(01:34):
strong first impression matters as older audiences go online, how
to operate strategically without relying on constant hiring or short
termed projects, and how to navigate dark socials. If you
want to understand how to build a brand that is
resilient and culturally relevant, this episode is a must listen. Okay,
and make sure to check out part one release a
few weeks ago to hear Eugene's top tips for how
(01:57):
to make your brand stand out in twenty twenty six.
Such a great listen. All right, let's get.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Into it, you j Welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I don't think I realized what a millennial I was
until I started hearing you talk about the death of
millennial brands, and I realized, fuck, like chow Pro, we
can't be a millennial brand, but because our target audience
is it's gen Z and millennials.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
But you know, you never want to aid yourself out.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
And for me, having been in this business for fifteen years,
gen Z was always just like a time that you
hear about at conferences or like you think it's a buzzword,
like you know AI personalization people, it's more of a buzzword.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Than having actual impact.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
All of a sudden, I think after post COVID, like
I got older and like came back out of COVID
being like, fuck, gen Z's everything. So I feel like
I need to learn before we can talk about gen
Z marketing, Like how do you describe a millennial brand?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
So that series was that came out of and that
was like the first video I ever filmed ever, which
I never really expected to go viral because I was
still like I didn't ever have a tripod. I had
like a my phone was in between two blocks of
books at that time. I wasn't even looking at the
camera properly and my screen was busted at the time
because I hadn't bothered buying a new iPhone in like
seven years. I think it came out of a series
(03:17):
of conversations and work that I'd done with brands over
the past couple of years of what happens when millennial
marketers are in charge. And it wasn't so much for
me about marketing two millennials versus marketing two gen z,
because I think it can be really dangerous getting overly
classified in terms of generational categories. It was just that
we grew up in a very particular cultural, political, economic context,
(03:41):
and that influenced the way that we built brands as well.
One of the big things was that millennials grew up
in the millennial lifestyle subsidy era, which is direct to
consumer brands. There was that whole idea of like venture capital,
We're going to disrupt this category dollar shave club, you know, hymns,
all of.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
That, disrupting like boring commodities.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, disrupt boring commodities by making them aspirational lifestyle products.
So this is going to become this it's going to
be elevated, and how do we elevate it. We did
it through beautiful flat lanths that were a very platform
native that were made to be seen consistently on digital
brand applications. And this was all also funded by very
very cheap digital media. So paid media back then was
(04:22):
like sense, it was arbitrage. It was free money if
you did digital advertising when other brands were doing traditional
legacy paid it like you were getting them for cents
on the dollar. Attention was so cheap and the context
was so low. It was static over video as well,
like all of these. And of course it was funded
by venture capital money because we were in that era
of zero interest rates, so all of this money was
(04:43):
flooding into the market. We had these absurd.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Valuations, products getting tech valuations because it's ECM, there's a
tech element.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
To it exactly. And so you had company and then
where that money came from. It came from Silicon Valley.
As you said, So you've got companies like all birds
from Silicon Valley. You've got some Silicon Valley going, well, gee,
a bunch of people where all birds in Silicon Valley.
I guess everyone in the world wants to do a
pair of all birds, you know, getting these multi billion
(05:10):
dollar valuations based off small consumer segments, and then ideas
basically like everyone wants to live like a millennial. What
I guess like I laid out was like post COVID especially,
a lot of these structural things started to collapse, Like obviously,
the financial environment changed. Interest rates went back up again.
Money started costing money, It costs started to cost a
(05:31):
lot more money to ship things, It started to cost
a hell of a lot more money to advertise things.
And then the media landscape and stuff changed as well.
Our brands became less. All of the things that millennials,
in particular as marketers were concerned with, authenticity, authenticity became
such an was such, but not even authenticity. It was
there was a very particular way that millennials and millennial
(05:53):
branding talked about authenticity. It was Edward Sharp and the
magnetic zeros all. It was garden state authenticity. Know, it
was like this world's crazy man, but like if we
can just have a human to human experience, we can, yeah, exactly,
we can make our way through the cancl like appeal
to this kind of like underlying common humanity. That was
(06:14):
really there were some brands that did are really fantastically
like Airbnb, like that was really how they built their
brand back around twenty five Belong Anywhere fifteen twenty sixteen, yeah, yeah,
but everyone was like everyone adopted that really sincere tone
of voice of like let's talk person to person, you know,
and that was but that what we're discovering is like
that was an esthetic and then it was an aesthetic
tone of voice that every brand adopted. If you didn't
(06:37):
matter if you're an energy company, if you're an oil company,
you know, if you're a consumer goods company, every brand
wanted to be real and human. That was a very
millennial look at what people want from brands, because it
was millennials with the generation if you remember from all
the market research were the values are into generation, and
so the premise was you have to appeal to the
underlying values of this generation if you want to sell
(07:01):
them product. I think we actually also found out that
that was also bullshit. Turns out that the stated intentions
were not actually the reasons that people actually bought things.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And so I said, like, it's easy to check box
on a survey that you care about, say the environment,
than to actually pay for it if it costs a
little bit more for a sustainable product.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, exactly. There are a lot of that very like
big intention action gap. So I think a lot of
these things were creaking around that particular time, and that
series was just kind of going through all of these
different narratives that I believed were collapsing at the same time,
and like that were common of for me. It was
it was also the algorithm loves to coin something, so
coining the millennial brand was a very very That was
(07:45):
one of the first lessons I learned. It's like, if
you can be known for coining a phrase.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that also the period that you
I forgot, like twenty twelve to twenty eighteen. You said,
I'm like, wow, that was our Like that was definitely
a big like one of our big growth phases. I
was like wrote that, well.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, and you know, like all power to you, right,
but you had to adapt and I think like that
series was this was a point in time. That point
in time is now over. Millennials are getting into the
driver's seats of brands now really like you're starting to
come into the managerial prowess as well. It's time to
act now.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
This is the important question, how is it different now
to market to a chen z Because before I had
the realization like things are really different now, I was
like no, no, no, but we do this.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I think Grandpa some since.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Said like, no, it's the kids that are wrong, like no, no, no, no,
go to adapts.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, I just think, I mean, it was many of
the things that we talked about on the last podcast.
It's recognizing that millennial error was actually the direct consumer
eraror as well. So the director consumer error was like
I can own everything. I can own the communication because
now I'm just going straight to digital media, which was
like one to one, you know, versus you know, the
traditional paid media which just goes out into the ETHA.
(08:57):
It was also an error of hyper attribution. So millennial
brands came up in the era where you were sold
row as. We were told every dollar in, we can
track every dollar out. We're finding out that that metric
is bullshit. Also row as is not actually I think
I can't remember where I saw this research, but ROAs
(09:19):
has only a very loose correlation with the quality of
the performance creative actually has a much stronger correlation with
awareness of brand. It's like a lot of this is
again I try not to frame it as millennial usus
GenZ as. We're having to relearn all of the old
principles of brand in new contexts. The context shifting is
that brand building has gotten a hell of a lot
more mediated. So now my brand has to go through
(09:42):
a third party to get to you. When you think
about what a gen Z brand is, the best gen
Z brands are probably the brands that understood creator marketing
better than everyone else. It's not that they're better at
marketing to gen Z, they're better at marketing to people
on these platforms, of which gen Z are a large component.
But it works for millennials as well. If a millennial,
a millennial on TikTok is not that different to a
(10:03):
gen Z person on TikTok. The platform actually defines the
user behavior. That's the most significant thing, and the platform
is effectively and instagrams are they're extraordinary platforms for creative marketing.
So creating for a post millennial brand, if you like,
is having brand ideas that are polysemantic. So brand ideas
where you have one brand that can mean many different
(10:24):
things to many different people. So if I give chopo
to fifty different influences, every single one of them can
make an interesting piece of content from that that scaffolds
up to a consistent association. But the types of content.
They make a very diverse yeah, own tonal voice, and
that's what I mean, Like the best post millennial brands
(10:44):
understand that things have to be delivered in a very
different tone of voice. It's been interesting for me because
I was I was the brand strategist, so I sat
media agnostic for most of my life and academia as well,
so you look down the nose of any particular execution.
But once I got into creative marketing, becoming a creative
you start to see that in practice. You start to
see brands. Some of them give you a hey, this
(11:04):
is the idea, run do whatever you want. Sometimes they
don't give you enough. Sometimes I'm like, you need to
give me some assets and things like that. In context.
Some of them are like we want you to say
these things, and they'll say exactly we want you to say,
and can you say it in this and say try
blah blah blah today, And you're just like have you
ever heard me say that?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And it's like this is going to be the worst
performing of all.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
There's always yeah, you know, like I don't want to say, okay,
you should just give creators free rein because I think
there does need to be a balance. It's different with
me because I'm a marketer. So for me, it's I
know your brand. In fact, I've just gone I was like,
can do you want to give me your brand strategy documents?
And that's and I'll read through all of that and
think about the messages that I need to convey. But
I think that like, there are still brands out there
(11:45):
and that understand some of them understand what it means
to show up and mediated context and have your brand
be refracted through someone else, and understand how to assess
that output as well. That's a big part of it
when the piece of content come back to you for
you to be able to say I wouldn't say that,
but I think that's quite effective when they say it,
(12:06):
versus I wouldn't say that, and I actually don't think
this is saying the right thing about our brand. So
it's a different skill set because it's more about intuition
than brand tracking or whatever. The governance structure is quite
different versus some brands that are like now you just
got to save the line, and I think that's that
is for me, that is like the key post millennial
skill set is how do I develop that intuition to
(12:29):
be able to understand and assess pieces of creative that
are increasingly mediated. It's something that I'm developing something for it, So.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
We'll wait for the CONTENTI to come out.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Watch this space.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
The latest thing you post it is about you coin
on social media close networks, So I was like, where
do you think close social media is going and how
do you think brand leverage on that?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I think Look, everyone has been in my world focused
on the death of social media. There was this article
that shows that social media usage is peaked and it's
actually going down. What they fail to acknowledge in that
particular piece is that it's going down from a pretty
extraordinary just COVID and post covid. So it peaked around
like one twenty twenty two, like you know, we were
still like all phone addicted because we're emerging from covid
(13:08):
as well. It's actually, funnily enough, social media usage is
going up with people that are age forty four and above.
It's just that our behaviors on social media are changing
as social media gets less social. So the main thing
to recognize is that most of these platforms have become
entertainment platforms that have social functionality built into them as well.
Yes you can stitch, yes you can make comments in this,
but effectively, like their discovery based platforms now, so it's
(13:31):
just about where you get served in session, and so
like what that means effectively is you have to show up,
like you said before, as if people are meeting you
for the first time every time. Don't rely on the
fact that this is like a consistent community. So what
is changing, I think is that there is starting to
be this understanding that on public social it's getting harder
and harder to build community as the platform has become
(13:52):
more discovery oriented. How do we actually build that community
in that stickiness so whether and that's interesting, like for me,
Instagram is like lockable reels, Instagram broadcast channels. WhatsApp has
now got like private dms as well, Like Snap, I
think is its own really interesting thing about like following
brands and what that brand means like because their Snap
is kind of like one of the last true social
(14:13):
media platforms, although they actually would call themselves a messaging
platform not a social media vel, it's one of the
last platforms where the social component is much more significant,
and that's a function of the app itself because you
open to the camera, So you're encouraged to create on Snap,
whereas you're encouraged to I would say, consume more on
other social platforms. Yeah, so I just think that's how
that's evolving.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Is that.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I think the most challenging thing is going to be
we're coming to a very difficult inflection point with attribution error. So,
as I said the DTC error promised minute attribution, you
also had access to this extraordinary segmentation data, third party
tracking everything, so you were able to go this dollar
and it was a little bit of a lie, but
(14:52):
you were able to say at least to show the
CFO something, say, hey, I put an X, I get out,
why hby we can maybe sleep in the same bed.
Whereas now when we talk about dark social is impossible
to get metrics for and the platforms will try to
do something. But things like dms and chat groups and
things like that, and conversations that are being had on
Instagram broadcast channels, there's no conversion funnel for that. There's
(15:16):
no We spent all of this time and we got
X out, but we know, but it's increasingly becoming more
and more important. I was out having a. I was
out a dinner with the CMO of Mecca a couple
of months ago where they were talking about like they
have like a Mecca Facebook group that they just started
over covid, and they put a lot of like resource
(15:37):
into just like nurturing that community. It's not like attribution
metric there, but it is extraordinarily effective. You only have
to look at how powerful the Mecha brand has become
over the last ten years. They're doing it right. I
think that's they like those brands because that brand is
Mecca is very brand led and brand led brands understand
that sometimes you have to be able to invest in
(15:58):
things that don't have a clear attribution metrics, but having
the skill set to understand the reason that we're doing this,
because it's incredibly powerful for being able to actually own
the community and own the story when everything else is
increasingly getting harder and harder to own.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
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your way. Wild card question because I so, I've been
(16:58):
doing speaking the last week, and part of what I
say it's like, you know, part of how we grew
is we were doing social media, whilst the big retail
powerhouses either didn't get social media, or they didn't get
the importance of it, or they even if they got
the importance, they didn't know how to do it and
they were delegated it's to some junior burger. Even for
a business like Chapa, we have resources dedicated to.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Where is the line?
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Because I always get this question asked by like founders
who sole operators, being like, I'm just trying to juggle everything.
How much time to put it into content? Even the
company like show pro like, how do people come to
that number?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Whether or not it is I think content is amo
It's like it's a it's a little bit of a misdirect.
How are people going to find your business? Your number
one concern when you're a small business is nobody knows
who the fuck I am? How am I going to
get my message and my ideas in front of people?
(17:54):
Social is one such channel to dedicate to it. I
think it's an incredibly powerful channel because it's a discovery
based algorithm right now, so your following doesn't matter. I
got a million views in my third week, and from
that and then from that series, I've built my entire business,
and in some instances on TikTok my views are actually
going down now, but I've built my audience off platform,
(18:15):
and of course I'm I'm executing in different ways now.
It's just an extra if you can crack it, it's
just extraordinarily powerful for demand generation and for brand building.
It's that if you're not going to carve out time
for that, what are you going to do? Are you
going to hand up flyers on the street. Are you
going to give it to an agency.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
To do that for IM? I hand it out vias,
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Look, and I still think, like like mailer drops can
be extraordinarily effective in some instances. It's just like radio
can be really effective. In some you can't afford most
legacy media. As a small business, you can. The great
thing about social is said the only thing that you
have to do is contribute your time. And because it's
so intimate, it's so wabi sabi, you don't need high
fidelity content. You don't need to spend fifty thousand dollars
(18:59):
creating a piece of creator of it literally can just
be you doing something silly. And I think like the
people that understand that, we'll always have a delta over
small businesses that just focus on the business. Now, the
flip side to that is maybe I don't want to
be a contact creator. Yes, maybe I don't. Maybe I
don't want to be the face of my brand, And
that's fine, it's just going to be harder. I think
that that is. I think the key question is to ask,
(19:21):
like how hard do I want to have to work here?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah? Like to get this, lets you have more money
and then you can like scale it without use UGC.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
But like you have money, or you just do it?
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Yes, oh you go, oh you have us, you work
and you give that money someone else and get them
to do it.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, exactly who do I? Everyone? You pay somehow right,
you pay in your own time, we pay some for
somebody else's time, and you pay for resources for that
as well. Like, ultimately, you have to be able to
solve that question, how the fuck are people going to
figure out who I am?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
That's ultimately I want to wrap it up with two
more questions. Now, what do you see as the trends
for the next three.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I think the most significant one that is going to
be assaulting brands moving forward is structuring for creative scale.
So we are increasingly moving to a world where where
we need way more outputs. More is the answer, right,
So we have to be across more channels, we've got
to be on more platforms that we've got to have
more pieces of creative matters already, Like give us two
(20:21):
hundred pieces of creative and will optimize for that. We'll
tell you what you need. And we have to be
across more moments of the funnel. And then we have
artificial intelligence which is democratizing creative production as well. So
there's more coming out right. I think the question that's
coming through for me is how are actually going to
manage all of this because our approval cycles are simply
not built to keep up with the whole thing. Right,
(20:45):
the old world, it'll take six months to make an
add and as part of that, we're going to run
that all the way up the chain, up to the
CMO and then to the CEO and then to the board. Right,
the big idea fine when it's one or a couple
of pieces of creative, but you can see basically everything
on the palm of your hand. When you're making two
hundred pieces of creative a week, how the fuck are
we going to manage for that? You're going to face big,
(21:08):
big bottlenecks at senior levels, so you effectively are going
to have to learn how to give over to more
and more junior people the ability to ratify and approve
create pieces of creative. That's complicated because it involves brand
governance of You've got to understand what this thing is.
And I think like that teaching that intuition is effectively
(21:30):
going to be the next big skill set, because otherwise
no one is going to be able to approve this
volume of creative and actually deal with all of this scale. Yeah,
that's that is the main one that I would be
thinking about It's like there's more stuff coming down the pipe.
How am I going to manage for more?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
How we have the systems and process right? Literally more.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
They're sitting here producing the podcast today and being like, Jane,
I've got ten pieces of content waiting for to sign up.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Can just fucking do it? So one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
And it's perfectly fair, right because you're like, this is
my thing. And also we live in a world where
any piece of content can go viral, be like a
massive brand building moment, but also any piece of content
can be like a brand destroying Yah. Yeah, exactly so,
and you're going out there every single time with this
like it feels like I'm going all in on every bet,
every bet, everything that goes out to the cause it
(22:17):
like that's it, like we show up and that's so
modern social it's a casino make big bets. Like I
understand that. But you're right, like ten pieces of content,
try one hundred a week. You're not going to be
able to do that exactly. So who are you going
to who you're going to trust, and how are you
going to be able to trust them effectively to do that?
That's just for you as a founder brand but it
applies equally for brands that. In fact, I would say
(22:39):
it applies equally for brands that are bigger, because you
can intuitively gut check that's right, that's not right, that's
on brand. But if you're a big brand, you just
work there for three six months, You've got a bunch
of people that have to approve stuff. Some of them
don't even understand brand. They work in ops, they work
in legal. We're legal where everyone is encouraged to say
(22:59):
no to things. You know, like these people are just
like they'll they'll happily bottleneck que because they don't. Most
people at corporates the thing they care about, they don't
care about.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
They don't care about going viral. The payoff is not
worth it for.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
That they care about. Most people in corporate work in
corporate because they don't want to get fired. Yes, that's
what it is. You go. You don't want you working.
You want financial stability because you got two point one
children and Sydney you've got a one and a half
million alone, you've got to payoff to the bank. I
can't afford to get fired. I would rather say no
to that thing, and I think that's going to be
(23:30):
really interesting to look at the delta of like brands
that can manage for that and be like, yeah, but yes,
but this is the creative output that's required, and these
brands are leaping ahead of us because they've built a
creative operating system that actually allows them to approve, to make,
and approve things at scale, and to do it really
(23:51):
consistently and to evolve consistently likes as culture shifts and
contact shifts as well. That's like elf Beauty, right, that's
like elf Beauty's power has been in how they structure
for creative scale and how they can shift so quickly
with the context. They work like and always on They
just you know that, like they don't work off creative
campaigns in the same way. It's like, what's it? What
(24:12):
is it today? We've got this thing that we're building
to But there's also a cadence that they're always part
of the conversation. It's extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, they're fucking killing it. Love it. And now it's
time for final advice. What's the best piece of advice
you received.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
I received a really good piece of advice from my
old boss who pushed me out the door in the
best way. He was like we were building that. We
were like looking at the operating model of the business,
and he was like, do you want to build an
agency this operating model? You're going to be building an
agency and you're going to have, you know, potentially dozens
of people underneath you. It's like, Fuck, no, I don't
want to have an agency. I don't want to build
a labor business. And that was the best piece of
(24:46):
advice I got. I completely retold my entire operating model
based on that. Maybe to universalize it. It's like to
really think about what is the kind of business that
you want to build that allows you to do the
thing things that you want and to do as little
of the things that you don't want to do as possible.
So my whole business now is structured around what I
(25:06):
don't want to do, and what I don't want to
do is work on things that I don't want to
work on.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Oh my god, that's my entire lazy CEO philosophy. I
don't do shit you don't want to Jack, I never.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Want to have to take a project because I need
the money. So that's why my business is split across
content speaking and strategy consulting, so I can assess any
opportunity and go that's right, Oh that's not right, and
say while wait for the next thing. There is always
something else diversified in the pipeline for me, And some
months it's crazy, like some month's content Partnership's like sixty percent.
(25:38):
Some months it's like ten percent. Sometimes strategy consulting is
fifty in that. But it's for me. It is really
a virtue of the fact that I hate being told
what to do. I hate thought I was lazy. Turns
out I'm not lazy. I'm just not motivated by orders.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Oh like shit, you are interested in Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
I really I can't. In fact, mind start he.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Didn't do well at school because it wasn't it was bored.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
I always had that. I think, like when someone tells
me what to do, instinctively, I don't want to do it. Yeah,
which works very well for a business of one, although
I have hired some people recently. Yeah, but it works
very well for a business of the size that I
work in. Advice that I got was once, this business
has to get bigger. When I'm running a ten person agency,
You've got to take projects you don't want to take.
When you're doing a thirty person agency. You've got to
(26:22):
take projects you mostly don't want to take.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
You're gonna have overheads.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah exactly, So yeah, yeah, I think like it's kind
of Another interesting piece of advice, also from the same person,
was think about how you can operationalize to make as
much money as possible without having to hire a single person.
So like, I didn't hire anyone until I crossed over
the two fifty three hundred k mark as one, and like,
(26:45):
I'm probably going to try not to hire anyone else
until I get to the million mark.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, it's just about scaling the labor operations.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Because you don't want to you're not in it to
like manage your team as well. I like you get
to a point where at least now I'm I'm very
lucky because I think the hardest part was like managing teams,
growing teams, and now because we've grown to a sudden's size,
I can like not actually manage everyone anyone, And I'm
just here to like I'm like the hype girl, but
(27:14):
I don't actually have to manage, so that I've crossed
over that line, which is good.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah exactly. Yeah, and now you are, now you're the brand.
Now you're the idea, yes, which just what I love.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Well, thank you so much, Eugene.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Honestly, I really love all your content and it's amazing
to get you here in three D and.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Chat so much in depth. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Chat all right, potty fam, now you feel to give
me a little Christmas present. One we can really help
the podcast is tell a friend how much you love
the podcast over the Christmas break, let's expand this, potty fam.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
All right, have your holidays. Okay, that's it from me
for now. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
If you're loving the podcast, don't forget to follow, and
I would love it if you can do me a
favor and leave us a review, and if you or
more joined the conversation on a podcast Instagram at the
Lazy CEO on the Score podcast all link in the
show notes.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Catch you next Tuesday
Welcome to the Lazy Ceo Podcast. I'm Jane Lou. I
escaped the corporate grind in twenty four and started my
own business, Choupo, a global nine figures online fashion brand,
and now I want to share my learnings.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Here with you every Tuesday, so join my conversations with.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
The entrepreneurs behind the iconic brands we all know and love.
In between interview weeks, you'll find me talking about hot
topics that fascinates me in the world of business and
personal development, alternating with help my Small Business episodes where
I deep dive into a small business every month to
help them grow. And why the lazy ceo You ask, Well,
(00:42):
give a lazy person a problem, they'll find the simplest
way to solve it.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Hey, potty fam.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
This week on the Lazy Ceo Podcast, Eugen Healey joins
me to talk about why Millennial marketing and Branding playbook
is coming to an end. Eugen, Here's a branch as
you can soult an educator and creator who helps global
brands like Google, Spotify, and Red Bull navigate cultural chaos.
Eugene has such a wealth and knowledge and just know
so much about brand I'm absolutely obsessed with his content.
(01:12):
He has a massive following of over four hundred thousand
for his insights on branding and culture. He knows how
founders and business leaders can build brands that can actually
cut through today's fragmented media landscape. In this episode, you'll
learn why lifestyle driven millennial brand strategies no longer cut through,
how to create flexible brand ideas that their creators execute
in their own way, why being consistent and making a
(01:34):
strong first impression matters as older audiences go online, how
to operate strategically without relying on constant hiring or short
termed projects, and how to navigate dark socials. If you
want to understand how to build a brand that is
resilient and culturally relevant, this episode is a must listen. Okay,
and make sure to check out part one release a
few weeks ago to hear Eugene's top tips for how
(01:57):
to make your brand stand out in twenty twenty six.
Such a great listen. All right, let's get.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Into it, you j Welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I don't think I realized what a millennial I was
until I started hearing you talk about the death of
millennial brands, and I realized, fuck, like chow Pro, we
can't be a millennial brand, but because our target audience
is it's gen Z and millennials.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
But you know, you never want to aid yourself out.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
And for me, having been in this business for fifteen years,
gen Z was always just like a time that you
hear about at conferences or like you think it's a buzzword,
like you know AI personalization people, it's more of a buzzword.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Than having actual impact.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
All of a sudden, I think after post COVID, like
I got older and like came back out of COVID
being like, fuck, gen Z's everything. So I feel like
I need to learn before we can talk about gen
Z marketing, Like how do you describe a millennial brand?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
So that series was that came out of and that
was like the first video I ever filmed ever, which
I never really expected to go viral because I was
still like I didn't ever have a tripod. I had
like a my phone was in between two blocks of
books at that time. I wasn't even looking at the
camera properly and my screen was busted at the time
because I hadn't bothered buying a new iPhone in like
seven years. I think it came out of a series
(03:17):
of conversations and work that I'd done with brands over
the past couple of years of what happens when millennial
marketers are in charge. And it wasn't so much for
me about marketing two millennials versus marketing two gen z,
because I think it can be really dangerous getting overly
classified in terms of generational categories. It was just that
we grew up in a very particular cultural, political, economic context,
(03:41):
and that influenced the way that we built brands as well.
One of the big things was that millennials grew up
in the millennial lifestyle subsidy era, which is direct to
consumer brands. There was that whole idea of like venture capital,
We're going to disrupt this category dollar shave club, you know, hymns,
all of.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
That, disrupting like boring commodities.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, disrupt boring commodities by making them aspirational lifestyle products.
So this is going to become this it's going to
be elevated, and how do we elevate it. We did
it through beautiful flat lanths that were a very platform
native that were made to be seen consistently on digital
brand applications. And this was all also funded by very
very cheap digital media. So paid media back then was
(04:22):
like sense, it was arbitrage. It was free money if
you did digital advertising when other brands were doing traditional
legacy paid it like you were getting them for cents
on the dollar. Attention was so cheap and the context
was so low. It was static over video as well,
like all of these. And of course it was funded
by venture capital money because we were in that era
of zero interest rates, so all of this money was
(04:43):
flooding into the market. We had these absurd.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Valuations, products getting tech valuations because it's ECM, there's a
tech element.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
To it exactly. And so you had company and then
where that money came from. It came from Silicon Valley.
As you said, So you've got companies like all birds
from Silicon Valley. You've got some Silicon Valley going, well, gee,
a bunch of people where all birds in Silicon Valley.
I guess everyone in the world wants to do a
pair of all birds, you know, getting these multi billion
(05:10):
dollar valuations based off small consumer segments, and then ideas
basically like everyone wants to live like a millennial. What
I guess like I laid out was like post COVID especially,
a lot of these structural things started to collapse, Like obviously,
the financial environment changed. Interest rates went back up again.
Money started costing money, It costs started to cost a
(05:31):
lot more money to ship things, It started to cost
a hell of a lot more money to advertise things.
And then the media landscape and stuff changed as well.
Our brands became less. All of the things that millennials,
in particular as marketers were concerned with, authenticity, authenticity became
such an was such, but not even authenticity. It was
there was a very particular way that millennials and millennial
(05:53):
branding talked about authenticity. It was Edward Sharp and the
magnetic zeros all. It was garden state authenticity. Know, it
was like this world's crazy man, but like if we
can just have a human to human experience, we can, yeah, exactly,
we can make our way through the cancl like appeal
to this kind of like underlying common humanity. That was
(06:14):
really there were some brands that did are really fantastically
like Airbnb, like that was really how they built their
brand back around twenty five Belong Anywhere fifteen twenty sixteen, yeah, yeah,
but everyone was like everyone adopted that really sincere tone
of voice of like let's talk person to person, you know,
and that was but that what we're discovering is like
that was an esthetic and then it was an aesthetic
tone of voice that every brand adopted. If you didn't
(06:37):
matter if you're an energy company, if you're an oil company,
you know, if you're a consumer goods company, every brand
wanted to be real and human. That was a very
millennial look at what people want from brands, because it
was millennials with the generation if you remember from all
the market research were the values are into generation, and
so the premise was you have to appeal to the
underlying values of this generation if you want to sell
(07:01):
them product. I think we actually also found out that
that was also bullshit. Turns out that the stated intentions
were not actually the reasons that people actually bought things.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And so I said, like, it's easy to check box
on a survey that you care about, say the environment,
than to actually pay for it if it costs a
little bit more for a sustainable product.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, exactly. There are a lot of that very like
big intention action gap. So I think a lot of
these things were creaking around that particular time, and that
series was just kind of going through all of these
different narratives that I believed were collapsing at the same time,
and like that were common of for me. It was
it was also the algorithm loves to coin something, so
coining the millennial brand was a very very That was
(07:45):
one of the first lessons I learned. It's like, if
you can be known for coining a phrase.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that also the period that you
I forgot, like twenty twelve to twenty eighteen. You said,
I'm like, wow, that was our Like that was definitely
a big like one of our big growth phases. I
was like wrote that, well.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, and you know, like all power to you, right,
but you had to adapt and I think like that
series was this was a point in time. That point
in time is now over. Millennials are getting into the
driver's seats of brands now really like you're starting to
come into the managerial prowess as well. It's time to
act now.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
This is the important question, how is it different now
to market to a chen z Because before I had
the realization like things are really different now, I was
like no, no, no, but we do this.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
I think Grandpa some since.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Said like, no, it's the kids that are wrong, like no, no, no, no,
go to adapts.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, I just think, I mean, it was many of
the things that we talked about on the last podcast.
It's recognizing that millennial error was actually the direct consumer
eraror as well. So the director consumer error was like
I can own everything. I can own the communication because
now I'm just going straight to digital media, which was
like one to one, you know, versus you know, the
traditional paid media which just goes out into the ETHA.
(08:57):
It was also an error of hyper attribution. So millennial
brands came up in the era where you were sold
row as. We were told every dollar in, we can
track every dollar out. We're finding out that that metric
is bullshit. Also row as is not actually I think
I can't remember where I saw this research, but ROAs
(09:19):
has only a very loose correlation with the quality of
the performance creative actually has a much stronger correlation with
awareness of brand. It's like a lot of this is
again I try not to frame it as millennial usus
GenZ as. We're having to relearn all of the old
principles of brand in new contexts. The context shifting is
that brand building has gotten a hell of a lot
more mediated. So now my brand has to go through
(09:42):
a third party to get to you. When you think
about what a gen Z brand is, the best gen
Z brands are probably the brands that understood creator marketing
better than everyone else. It's not that they're better at
marketing to gen Z, they're better at marketing to people
on these platforms, of which gen Z are a large component.
But it works for millennials as well. If a millennial,
a millennial on TikTok is not that different to a
(10:03):
gen Z person on TikTok. The platform actually defines the
user behavior. That's the most significant thing, and the platform
is effectively and instagrams are they're extraordinary platforms for creative marketing.
So creating for a post millennial brand, if you like,
is having brand ideas that are polysemantic. So brand ideas
where you have one brand that can mean many different
(10:24):
things to many different people. So if I give chopo
to fifty different influences, every single one of them can
make an interesting piece of content from that that scaffolds
up to a consistent association. But the types of content.
They make a very diverse yeah, own tonal voice, and
that's what I mean, Like the best post millennial brands
(10:44):
understand that things have to be delivered in a very
different tone of voice. It's been interesting for me because
I was I was the brand strategist, so I sat
media agnostic for most of my life and academia as well,
so you look down the nose of any particular execution.
But once I got into creative marketing, becoming a creative
you start to see that in practice. You start to
see brands. Some of them give you a hey, this
(11:04):
is the idea, run do whatever you want. Sometimes they
don't give you enough. Sometimes I'm like, you need to
give me some assets and things like that. In context.
Some of them are like we want you to say
these things, and they'll say exactly we want you to say,
and can you say it in this and say try
blah blah blah today, And you're just like have you
ever heard me say that?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And it's like this is going to be the worst
performing of all.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
There's always yeah, you know, like I don't want to say, okay,
you should just give creators free rein because I think
there does need to be a balance. It's different with
me because I'm a marketer. So for me, it's I
know your brand. In fact, I've just gone I was like,
can do you want to give me your brand strategy documents?
And that's and I'll read through all of that and
think about the messages that I need to convey. But
I think that like, there are still brands out there
(11:45):
and that understand some of them understand what it means
to show up and mediated context and have your brand
be refracted through someone else, and understand how to assess
that output as well. That's a big part of it
when the piece of content come back to you for
you to be able to say I wouldn't say that,
but I think that's quite effective when they say it,
(12:06):
versus I wouldn't say that, and I actually don't think
this is saying the right thing about our brand. So
it's a different skill set because it's more about intuition
than brand tracking or whatever. The governance structure is quite
different versus some brands that are like now you just
got to save the line, and I think that's that
is for me, that is like the key post millennial
skill set is how do I develop that intuition to
(12:29):
be able to understand and assess pieces of creative that
are increasingly mediated. It's something that I'm developing something for it, So.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
We'll wait for the CONTENTI to come out.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Watch this space.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
The latest thing you post it is about you coin
on social media close networks, So I was like, where
do you think close social media is going and how
do you think brand leverage on that?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I think Look, everyone has been in my world focused
on the death of social media. There was this article
that shows that social media usage is peaked and it's
actually going down. What they fail to acknowledge in that
particular piece is that it's going down from a pretty
extraordinary just COVID and post covid. So it peaked around
like one twenty twenty two, like you know, we were
still like all phone addicted because we're emerging from covid
(13:08):
as well. It's actually, funnily enough, social media usage is
going up with people that are age forty four and above.
It's just that our behaviors on social media are changing
as social media gets less social. So the main thing
to recognize is that most of these platforms have become
entertainment platforms that have social functionality built into them as well.
Yes you can stitch, yes you can make comments in this,
but effectively, like their discovery based platforms now, so it's
(13:31):
just about where you get served in session, and so
like what that means effectively is you have to show up,
like you said before, as if people are meeting you
for the first time every time. Don't rely on the
fact that this is like a consistent community. So what
is changing, I think is that there is starting to
be this understanding that on public social it's getting harder
and harder to build community as the platform has become
(13:52):
more discovery oriented. How do we actually build that community
in that stickiness so whether and that's interesting, like for me,
Instagram is like lockable reels, Instagram broadcast channels. WhatsApp has
now got like private dms as well, Like Snap, I
think is its own really interesting thing about like following
brands and what that brand means like because their Snap
is kind of like one of the last true social
(14:13):
media platforms, although they actually would call themselves a messaging
platform not a social media vel, it's one of the
last platforms where the social component is much more significant,
and that's a function of the app itself because you
open to the camera, So you're encouraged to create on Snap,
whereas you're encouraged to I would say, consume more on
other social platforms. Yeah, so I just think that's how
that's evolving.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Is that.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I think the most challenging thing is going to be
we're coming to a very difficult inflection point with attribution error. So,
as I said the DTC error promised minute attribution, you
also had access to this extraordinary segmentation data, third party
tracking everything, so you were able to go this dollar
and it was a little bit of a lie, but
(14:52):
you were able to say at least to show the
CFO something, say, hey, I put an X, I get out,
why hby we can maybe sleep in the same bed.
Whereas now when we talk about dark social is impossible
to get metrics for and the platforms will try to
do something. But things like dms and chat groups and
things like that, and conversations that are being had on
Instagram broadcast channels, there's no conversion funnel for that. There's
(15:16):
no We spent all of this time and we got
X out, but we know, but it's increasingly becoming more
and more important. I was out having a. I was
out a dinner with the CMO of Mecca a couple
of months ago where they were talking about like they
have like a Mecca Facebook group that they just started
over covid, and they put a lot of like resource
(15:37):
into just like nurturing that community. It's not like attribution
metric there, but it is extraordinarily effective. You only have
to look at how powerful the Mecha brand has become
over the last ten years. They're doing it right. I
think that's they like those brands because that brand is
Mecca is very brand led and brand led brands understand
that sometimes you have to be able to invest in
(15:58):
things that don't have a clear attribution metrics, but having
the skill set to understand the reason that we're doing this,
because it's incredibly powerful for being able to actually own
the community and own the story when everything else is
increasingly getting harder and harder to own.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
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(16:36):
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your way. Wild card question because I so, I've been
(16:58):
doing speaking the last week, and part of what I
say it's like, you know, part of how we grew
is we were doing social media, whilst the big retail
powerhouses either didn't get social media, or they didn't get
the importance of it, or they even if they got
the importance, they didn't know how to do it and
they were delegated it's to some junior burger. Even for
a business like Chapa, we have resources dedicated to.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Where is the line?
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Because I always get this question asked by like founders
who sole operators, being like, I'm just trying to juggle everything.
How much time to put it into content? Even the
company like show pro like, how do people come to
that number?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Whether or not it is I think content is amo
It's like it's a it's a little bit of a misdirect.
How are people going to find your business? Your number
one concern when you're a small business is nobody knows
who the fuck I am? How am I going to
get my message and my ideas in front of people?
(17:54):
Social is one such channel to dedicate to it. I
think it's an incredibly powerful channel because it's a discovery
based algorithm right now, so your following doesn't matter. I
got a million views in my third week, and from
that and then from that series, I've built my entire business,
and in some instances on TikTok my views are actually
going down now, but I've built my audience off platform,
(18:15):
and of course I'm I'm executing in different ways now.
It's just an extra if you can crack it, it's
just extraordinarily powerful for demand generation and for brand building.
It's that if you're not going to carve out time
for that, what are you going to do? Are you
going to hand up flyers on the street. Are you
going to give it to an agency.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
To do that for IM? I hand it out vias,
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Look, and I still think, like like mailer drops can
be extraordinarily effective in some instances. It's just like radio
can be really effective. In some you can't afford most
legacy media. As a small business, you can. The great
thing about social is said the only thing that you
have to do is contribute your time. And because it's
so intimate, it's so wabi sabi, you don't need high
fidelity content. You don't need to spend fifty thousand dollars
(18:59):
creating a piece of creator of it literally can just
be you doing something silly. And I think like the
people that understand that, we'll always have a delta over
small businesses that just focus on the business. Now, the
flip side to that is maybe I don't want to
be a contact creator. Yes, maybe I don't. Maybe I
don't want to be the face of my brand, And
that's fine, it's just going to be harder. I think
that that is. I think the key question is to ask,
(19:21):
like how hard do I want to have to work here?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah? Like to get this, lets you have more money
and then you can like scale it without use UGC.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
But like you have money, or you just do it?
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Yes, oh you go, oh you have us, you work
and you give that money someone else and get them
to do it.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, exactly who do I? Everyone? You pay somehow right,
you pay in your own time, we pay some for
somebody else's time, and you pay for resources for that
as well. Like, ultimately, you have to be able to
solve that question, how the fuck are people going to
figure out who I am?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
That's ultimately I want to wrap it up with two
more questions. Now, what do you see as the trends
for the next three.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I think the most significant one that is going to
be assaulting brands moving forward is structuring for creative scale.
So we are increasingly moving to a world where where
we need way more outputs. More is the answer, right,
So we have to be across more channels, we've got
to be on more platforms that we've got to have
more pieces of creative matters already, Like give us two
(20:21):
hundred pieces of creative and will optimize for that. We'll
tell you what you need. And we have to be
across more moments of the funnel. And then we have
artificial intelligence which is democratizing creative production as well. So
there's more coming out right. I think the question that's
coming through for me is how are actually going to
manage all of this because our approval cycles are simply
not built to keep up with the whole thing. Right,
(20:45):
the old world, it'll take six months to make an
add and as part of that, we're going to run
that all the way up the chain, up to the
CMO and then to the CEO and then to the board. Right,
the big idea fine when it's one or a couple
of pieces of creative, but you can see basically everything
on the palm of your hand. When you're making two
hundred pieces of creative a week, how the fuck are
we going to manage for that? You're going to face big,
(21:08):
big bottlenecks at senior levels, so you effectively are going
to have to learn how to give over to more
and more junior people the ability to ratify and approve
create pieces of creative. That's complicated because it involves brand
governance of You've got to understand what this thing is.
And I think like that teaching that intuition is effectively
(21:30):
going to be the next big skill set, because otherwise
no one is going to be able to approve this
volume of creative and actually deal with all of this scale. Yeah,
that's that is the main one that I would be
thinking about It's like there's more stuff coming down the pipe.
How am I going to manage for more?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
How we have the systems and process right? Literally more.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
They're sitting here producing the podcast today and being like, Jane,
I've got ten pieces of content waiting for to sign up.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Can just fucking do it? So one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
And it's perfectly fair, right because you're like, this is
my thing. And also we live in a world where
any piece of content can go viral, be like a
massive brand building moment, but also any piece of content
can be like a brand destroying Yah. Yeah, exactly so,
and you're going out there every single time with this
like it feels like I'm going all in on every bet,
every bet, everything that goes out to the cause it
(22:17):
like that's it, like we show up and that's so
modern social it's a casino make big bets. Like I
understand that. But you're right, like ten pieces of content,
try one hundred a week. You're not going to be
able to do that exactly. So who are you going
to who you're going to trust, and how are you
going to be able to trust them effectively to do that?
That's just for you as a founder brand but it
applies equally for brands that. In fact, I would say
(22:39):
it applies equally for brands that are bigger, because you
can intuitively gut check that's right, that's not right, that's
on brand. But if you're a big brand, you just
work there for three six months, You've got a bunch
of people that have to approve stuff. Some of them
don't even understand brand. They work in ops, they work
in legal. We're legal where everyone is encouraged to say
(22:59):
no to things. You know, like these people are just
like they'll they'll happily bottleneck que because they don't. Most
people at corporates the thing they care about, they don't
care about.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
They don't care about going viral. The payoff is not
worth it for.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
That they care about. Most people in corporate work in
corporate because they don't want to get fired. Yes, that's
what it is. You go. You don't want you working.
You want financial stability because you got two point one
children and Sydney you've got a one and a half
million alone, you've got to payoff to the bank. I
can't afford to get fired. I would rather say no
to that thing, and I think that's going to be
(23:30):
really interesting to look at the delta of like brands
that can manage for that and be like, yeah, but yes,
but this is the creative output that's required, and these
brands are leaping ahead of us because they've built a
creative operating system that actually allows them to approve, to make,
and approve things at scale, and to do it really
(23:51):
consistently and to evolve consistently likes as culture shifts and
contact shifts as well. That's like elf Beauty, right, that's
like elf Beauty's power has been in how they structure
for creative scale and how they can shift so quickly
with the context. They work like and always on They
just you know that, like they don't work off creative
campaigns in the same way. It's like, what's it? What
(24:12):
is it today? We've got this thing that we're building
to But there's also a cadence that they're always part
of the conversation. It's extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, they're fucking killing it. Love it. And now it's
time for final advice. What's the best piece of advice
you received.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
I received a really good piece of advice from my
old boss who pushed me out the door in the
best way. He was like we were building that. We
were like looking at the operating model of the business,
and he was like, do you want to build an
agency this operating model? You're going to be building an
agency and you're going to have, you know, potentially dozens
of people underneath you. It's like, Fuck, no, I don't
want to have an agency. I don't want to build
a labor business. And that was the best piece of
(24:46):
advice I got. I completely retold my entire operating model
based on that. Maybe to universalize it. It's like to
really think about what is the kind of business that
you want to build that allows you to do the
thing things that you want and to do as little
of the things that you don't want to do as possible.
So my whole business now is structured around what I
(25:06):
don't want to do, and what I don't want to
do is work on things that I don't want to
work on.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Oh my god, that's my entire lazy CEO philosophy. I
don't do shit you don't want to Jack, I never.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Want to have to take a project because I need
the money. So that's why my business is split across
content speaking and strategy consulting, so I can assess any
opportunity and go that's right, Oh that's not right, and
say while wait for the next thing. There is always
something else diversified in the pipeline for me, And some
months it's crazy, like some month's content Partnership's like sixty percent.
(25:38):
Some months it's like ten percent. Sometimes strategy consulting is
fifty in that. But it's for me. It is really
a virtue of the fact that I hate being told
what to do. I hate thought I was lazy. Turns
out I'm not lazy. I'm just not motivated by orders.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Oh like shit, you are interested in Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
I really I can't. In fact, mind start he.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Didn't do well at school because it wasn't it was bored.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
I always had that. I think, like when someone tells
me what to do, instinctively, I don't want to do it. Yeah,
which works very well for a business of one, although
I have hired some people recently. Yeah, but it works
very well for a business of the size that I
work in. Advice that I got was once, this business
has to get bigger. When I'm running a ten person agency,
You've got to take projects you don't want to take.
When you're doing a thirty person agency. You've got to
(26:22):
take projects you mostly don't want to take.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
You're gonna have overheads.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah exactly, So yeah, yeah, I think like it's kind
of Another interesting piece of advice, also from the same person,
was think about how you can operationalize to make as
much money as possible without having to hire a single person.
So like, I didn't hire anyone until I crossed over
the two fifty three hundred k mark as one, and like,
(26:45):
I'm probably going to try not to hire anyone else
until I get to the million mark.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, it's just about scaling the labor operations.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Because you don't want to you're not in it to
like manage your team as well. I like you get
to a point where at least now I'm I'm very
lucky because I think the hardest part was like managing teams,
growing teams, and now because we've grown to a sudden's size,
I can like not actually manage everyone anyone, And I'm
just here to like I'm like the hype girl, but
(27:14):
I don't actually have to manage, so that I've crossed
over that line, which is good.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah exactly. Yeah, and now you are, now you're the brand.
Now you're the idea, yes, which just what I love.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Well, thank you so much, Eugene.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Honestly, I really love all your content and it's amazing
to get you here in three D and.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Chat so much in depth. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Chat all right, potty fam, now you feel to give
me a little Christmas present. One we can really help
the podcast is tell a friend how much you love
the podcast over the Christmas break, let's expand this, potty fam.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
All right, have your holidays. Okay, that's it from me
for now. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
If you're loving the podcast, don't forget to follow, and
I would love it if you can do me a
favor and leave us a review, and if you or
more joined the conversation on a podcast Instagram at the
Lazy CEO on the Score podcast all link in the
show notes.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Catch you next Tuesday
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