Dear Reader,

There’s a moment every business owner lives through, whether they admit it or not.

You know you have something good — a skill, a story, a service — and you want the world to see it.

So you do what feels natural:

  • You push.
  • You shout.
  • You hustle.

You try to force attention, force momentum, force the sale.

And the harder you push, the more people back away.

Brian Brushwood learned this the hard way on Sixth Street in Austin.

He had award-winning magic tricks, world-class skill, and the desperation of a young man who believed he was one great moment away from being discovered.

So he shouted his heart out.

And the crowd formed a ring around him — not to watch the show, but to avoid it.

While Brian burned through his voice and his pride, another magician sat quietly twenty feet away with a top hat and a bunny.

He didn’t say a word.

He didn’t demand anything.

He didn’t chase a crowd.

He simply offered a gift — a tiny moment of story that someone could enjoy without paying a dollar or picking a card.

And one by one, people stopped.

Then they smiled.

Then they stepped closer.

And when the moment was right, the magician asked for the card — and they gave it willingly.

That’s the story hiding inside this conversation.

It’s not about magic.

It’s about how people actually work.

Attention can’t be forced.

Trust can’t be demanded.

And sales don’t appear because you shouted loud enough or suffered long enough.

Every outcome you want — in business, in leadership, in relationships — passes through the mind of another person.

And people pay attention to those who offer value first.

Brian didn’t succeed because he had better tricks.

He succeeded because he learned to stop grabbing and start giving.

He stopped trying to be the loudest person in the street and became the person who created a moment worth leaning toward.

That’s the attention equation.

Not volume — value.

Not pressure — permission.

Not demand — direction.

And if you’re willing to embrace that shift, you won’t just earn attention.

You’ll earn momentum — the kind that carries you forward long after the noise fades.

 

Watch / listen above or read below.

Todd Liles: Welcome to Todd Liles and the Wizard of Ads. I’m Todd Liles, and this is part two of four of a four-part conversation with magician and creator Brian Brushwood and Roy H. Williams. If part one was about honesty and illusion, part two is about how the human mind follows a story and how curiosity and surprise and rhythm pull us forward.

Brian shares how he built anticipation and why people loved that moment after the reveal and how pattern recognition shapes our attention. Roy ties it all back together in the form of how this affects advertisement and why a great story doesn’t just inform, but it transforms. You’re gonna love this episode, so let’s get straight into it.

Now, Roy, you’re telling me that Brian knows how to solve problems with circles.

Roy Williams: He can draw a circle, solve any problem you have.

Brian Brushwood: That’s true.

Todd Liles: With a circling.

Roy Williams: With a circle.

Brian Brushwood: It is one of those things, once you see it, you just keep seeing it everywhere.

Todd Liles: Well, let’s do that because I wanted to talk about how attention is like magic, how it is like a magic trick. So what’s up with these circles?

Brian Brushwood: So we’ve all been there where you know you’ve got the goods, whatever your thing is, right? There’s only, I think, three currencies. There’s only story, attention, and sales. Story is what you got. If you talk or think or speak for a living, that’s your story. If you do actions, a service, that’s your story. If you sell things, that thing is your story, right? We all want the currency of sales. Picture a dollar sign. Here, we’ll go ahead and we’ll actually draw this. So you got story, and we all want sales. If not money itself, then we at least want action. We want to inspire kindness in a stranger. We want to get people to get out and vote or whatever.

Roy Williams: You want ’em to do something.

Brian Brushwood: Yeah.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Brian Brushwood: And then what I am here to say and what everybody seems to miss is unless you are alone in the desert and what you want is to pick up a rock, the shortest path between you and what you want is through other people’s minds, through the power of attention.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Brian Brushwood: Earned attention. And I learned this on a street corner on Austin 6th Street. When I was 20-something years old, used to be back in the old days before YouTube, you had to enter contests to prove how good you were at magic. And I would enter statewide competitions. Twice I got Best Magic in Texas. So I knew I had a good trick and I knew I needed to be polished.

So I went to Austin 6th Street and there they were, thousands of people coming and going up and down the street, each one waiting for what I had. Unfortunately, if I was a musician, I could just start playing. But I couldn’t do that as a magician. I needed people to pick a card. I couldn’t start until somebody was willing to give me the time of day.

So knowing that I had the goods, I started to shout, “Hey, everybody, gather around! You’re gonna see an incredible magic show! I’m gonna eat fire, break bricks over my head, I’m gonna escape from a straitjacket, stick a nail in one eye, pop it out the other eye!” And the more of the shouting I did, the more a circle of avoidance happened around me. Because for everybody coming and going, there was a performance happening. And the performance was, this crazy man would like you to pick a card. And nobody was interested in that. That’s me in Austin, Texas.

Meanwhile, over in Philadelphia was a magician named David Groves, who literally wrote the book on street performing. It’s called ‘Be a Street Magician.’ And he, as far as I know, had zero Texas-based magic trophies. But he never had a problem building a crowd because he had one thing that I didn’t. He had a table with a top hat and a bunny rabbit in it. He also had a magic show, but he just sat there futzing with the cards, waiting. Because as all those people were coming and going, every one out… One out of 100 eyeballs would linger and enjoy that self-contained unit of story of the bunny rabbit in the top hat.

Roy Williams: There’s a bunny rabbit and a top hat.

Todd Liles: He’s not gonna stop.

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: “Can I pet the bunny?”

Brian Brushwood: Well, sooner or later, one out of 100 people would come over and ask, and he’d say, “Yes, of course, of course.” But at that point, he had won. He had sprung his trap. “Well, thank you very much. Oh, well, you know the rule, though.” “What rule?” “You pet the bunny, you gotta pick a card.” What, are you gonna say no to that? No, of course not. You self-selected. You pet the bunny. You owe him. You could pick a card.

But now, the performance has changed. Now, the characters are the bunny rabbit, the hat, the magician, a little girl, a deck of cards, and that’s a much more interesting story. And so as those eyeballs are coming and going, those linger a little bit longer.

Roy Williams: They stop to see what’s gonna happen.

Brian Brushwood: And he makes that harvest. He says, “Take a step forward. Go ahead, help her remember the card.” And, and, and. And soon an amazing thing has happened, and the applause happens, and he rolls into another trick and another trick. And something very curious happens at around the 20-minute mark. People begin to realize they’ve received something good and of value.

And research… Dennis Regan of Cornell University did a study on this. Humans love to reciprocate. Even if we don’t like the person or the entity, even if we don’t like the institution, we don’t want to owe anybody anything. So at the end, when he takes that exact same top hat and passes it around for everyone to put 20 bucks in, everybody thanks him. It’s the same thing that you see in an episode of Scam School. You begin with a gift.

So those are… If there are three currencies of story, attention, and sales, there are three verbs, to gift. Think about that bunny on the table. Now, the bunny on the table is not a free sample. People are always trying to figure out, “I can’t give away my thing for free.” Good. I don’t want you to. Because in this story, David Groves, he’s not running a petting zoo and haberdashery. He’s not selling the bunnies and the hats. That’s just congruent with the magic trick, the thing he really wants you to participate in.

And so likewise, think of a self-contained gift. And it must be a gift that somebody can not buy your service and they still got something of value. Roy does this all the time when he writes a funny ad or a poignant ad or a thoughtful ad or an insightful ad. It is a gift. And even if you hope you never need this insurance or this emergency AC repair, you are still thankful for the gift, the bunny on the table that you get. And because it is a gift freely given, it earns you a little bit of that special currency of attention.

We know the problem is how do you measure attention? We know what zero views look like. We know what a million views look like. But it’s hard to tell which of these are powerful and deep connections and which are shallow. And the only way to find out is to ask. There come times that you have to harvest. I haven’t figured out what to draw. I know to draw a gift or a bunny on a table for the gift.

But for harvest, I usually just draw a flower because there’s a right time to harvest. There’s a right time for the beat to drop. There’s a right time to ask for that standing ovation. And when you get that action from your harvest, these two actions everyone can see you do. Everybody can tell whether or not you’re gifting or harvesting. Complaining about your morning, that’s you harvesting. Asking people how their day is going, that’s a gift. But the private one is deciding to take that goodwill, I draw a heart with a heartbeat on there, and reinvest it into making the story bigger.

Think about how the bunny on the table goes from this self-contained, itty-bitty thing, that’s a cute bunny, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, eventually being a 25-minute show and everybody freaking out and applauding for. That is so fundamental. It’s stochastic.

You think of Newtonian physics. Stochastic is you deal with percentages, and eventually certain things become impossible not to have happen. It’s how internal combustion engines work. There’s not any one particular molecule of vaporized gas that’s first to go, but you know that at this temperature, pressure, in this situation, a spark is all it’s going to take. And that is exactly what you want to do with your product, your service, and your marketing.

Roy Williams: The gift is something as small as even just making somebody smile or making somebody laugh or making somebody be more confident or help them shift their perspective. Okay?. Right now, everybody knows this, but when you remind somebody of it in the right moment and you’re not asking for anything in return. Say “You know what feels really good sometimes? Just you’re going through the day and there’s too much to do in too little time. Just remember that people are more important than things.”

And people go, “That’s right. By gosh, that’s right. Thank you for that. I’m gonna just…” And it’s a gift. And then you’re not asking for anything in return, but they like you. They like that guy. That guy helped me remember, “Yeah, people are more important than things.” And it’s like, “Yeah.” You know, and it gives them something to celebrate. It gives them something to look forward to. You’ve helped them think through things differently.

In advertising, to make somebody smile or to remind somebody of something that is in their best interest but not in your best interest, you’re not asking for anything in return for that. You’re just doing what a friend would do. Giving them the attention and the thoughtful kind of a redirection of their thoughts is what friends do for their friends. And so when you do the service of a friend to the public, they feel like they know you. They kind of like you. You gave them a gift.

And so what’s the harvest? You have their attention. They’re now aware of you. They’re predisposed toward you. What was the gift? You made them laugh. You reminded them of something, or you made them think about something a little bit differently. And at no time are you asking them to buy anything from you. Well, you gave them a gift, so now they feel like they know you and they like you. That’s all I do for a living.

Okay, now let’s keep going around the circle because when there comes time for a harvest… So now there is a time. “Notice, this is a good time of year that you should think about such and such.” “Wait a minute. This guy’s always giving me these gifts. He’s making me smile. He’s reminding me of the important things in life. He’s not really trying to sell me anything most of the time, but now he is reminding me, ‘Oh, this is the time of year you should probably do this.'”

He’s going, he’s good. He’s right. And by golly, you know who I’m gonna use? I’m gonna use that guy. Well, that’s a harvest.

Brian Brushwood: Or maybe it doesn’t even need to be. For example, let’s say you do a roofing thing and there’s some kind of roofing maintenance thing that it is that time of year.

Roy Williams: Sure.

Brian Brushwood: You’re not gonna be there for them doing their gutter maintenance, but you’re reminding them. It’s not exactly a gift to be reminded, “Hey, you gotta clear out your gutters,” but it’s a harvest you don’t mind. You’re like, “Ah, you’re right. I really should.” But now the story has gotten bigger and you’ve earned more of that real estate of the mind.

And every lap you go around, this is why I draw it in one direction, because this is the part that I think Roy likes the most, is that the circle only goes one way. Now, I’m not here to say you can’t possibly go the other way. I’m just gonna say there’s too much friction this way because the only way to do it is with money.

But everybody wants to go backwards. Start with story. Imagine that you knew you had a billion-dollar trilogy franchise in your mind. It’s all written out in your head. It belongs on the Hollywood big screen. So if you wanted to go backwards on the circle, you would hop on a plane, go out to LA, you do a thousand lunches with a thousand producers, you get 10 option deals, maybe one would be a movie if you’re very lucky…

Roy Williams: You’re going backwards on the circle saying, “Here’s my story, now pay me.”

Brian Brushwood: That’s right.

Roy Williams: See, because if you’re going forward, story gets you attention. The attention allows you to harvest, but instead of harvesting, reinvest and go around the circle again and you get momentum and you get power. So keep going.

Brian Brushwood: And then let’s look at the same thing going forward on the circle. Let’s take a situation where it would have been illegal to get paid for a story. Erika Mitchell really liked Twilight, the vampire, the werewolf, the girl. She started to write saucy erotic fan fiction of them doing it in all different kinds of ways. She legally couldn’t get paid for it because those weren’t her characters or situations. Those weren’t her IP.

So she posted them for free on fanfiction.net where they generated a lot of attention. So much so that fanfiction.net said, “Please remove this smut off of our site.” And she, now wealthy in story and attention, harvested, saying, “Hey gang, who would like to follow the adventures at my new site, 50shades.net or.com?” 50shades.com. You see where this is going.

Todd Liles: Oh yeah.

Roy Williams: Good story is good story is good story. Eventually, she gets everyone to buy the ebook, everyone to buy the paperback, everybody to buy the hardcover. And contrary to popular opinion, Hollywood doesn’t love potential; they love momentum. And Fifty Shades went on to be, I believe, a $1.5 billion box office franchise. Fifty Shades of Grey.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And I’m just sitting there thinking, and what it was, she said, “Alright, so I can’t take these stories and sell them.” But everyone wants to go backwards on story. “Here’s my story, now pay me. Told you a story, now pay me.” It’s like, no. If you go backwards, which is what everybody wants to do…” I said my thing, now give me money. I want the order.”

No. You’ve got attention. You have to have a courtship, and the courtship comes with attention. And then you can move to a harvest. Now you get a kiss. Okay, well, let’s make another lap. You know what I mean? And so this idea of, “I bought you dinner, now go to bed with me,” that’s going backwards on the circle, right?

Brian Brushwood: Yes.

Roy Williams: Now, I’ve often, when a man and his wife were there together, sometimes if they’re friends, I’ll say, “Look, I’m gonna tell you something about your husband. If you had known what he was thinking, what was in his mind the day he met you and said, ‘Hey, could we meet for coffee sometime?’ you would have never met him for coffee.” ‘Cause I know exactly what he was thinking. And the guys always laugh like you’re laughing. It’s like, yeah. The thing is, smart men who are looking for a long-term relationship realize this is gonna take time. This is gonna take a long courtship period.

Advertising is like that. Doing magic tricks is like that. Selling home services is like that. Everybody says, “I want to run this ad. I told you this story. Now call me and book a job.” And I’m going, it doesn’t work that way. You have to go this way. Harvest the attention, reinvest it. Harvest the attention, reinvest it. Harvest the attention, reinvest it. Now everybody knows you and loves you. Your name is the name they think of first and feel the best about.

Todd Liles: Yep.

Roy Williams: So he was talking about real-world situation. She didn’t own the IP, so she couldn’t sell it. It would be against the law. But it’s not the thing to do to say, “Here’s my amazing song, now give me a bunch of money.”

Brian Brushwood: So likewise, what we see in the world of, let’s say, dating, let’s keep it there. People think, “Oh, I’m honest, I have integrity, I’m trustworthy,” all these things. These are all internal aspects. In the version of a service industry, “Oh, we show up on time. We get five-star Yelp reviews,” whatever.

Roy Williams: We wear booties.

Brian Brushwood: Exactly, right? But again, that’s all, if you’re telling, you’re trying to go backwards on the circle. Instead, create an organic moment to go forward. So another…

Todd Liles: Let me show you this because I love this. I’m gonna leave it right here. So the service system that we teach, we call PRESS PLAY. It’s an acronym. Stands for: Be prepared, Build a relationship, Evaluate what their real needs and wants are by asking, you ask ’em questions, and then you Settle their fears.

So we’re all storytelling. Settling fears is a point in time where we say, “This is what you should expect. This is how we’re gonna find your problems. Here’s how we price our goods and services. No surprises. You won’t be scared.” Then we do a system diagnostic. And on the system diagnostic, we invite them, “Come with us. Come see what we see.” So they’re discovering at the same time.

Storytelling, attention. Storytelling, attention. After we know what’s really, really, really going on, we then create Prescriptions. And just like you heard what Elmore was saying, “This is what’s broke. This is why it’s broke. This is what’ll happen if we fix it. This is what happens if we do nothing.”

With the prescriptions comes the money. Reinvesting, I love, because that would just be PRESS P: Labor, add value. When we do labor, we tell the guys, “Go do an amazing job. Like one you’d be super proud of. You would put this on This Old House. You would love this.” When you’re done, go back and go, “Let me show you what I’ve done. I’m really happy with this. You’re gonna be pleased. It’s so clean. It’s so beautiful. It’s working so nicely.”

And you’re showing the story. And then, “Oh, and by the way, there was another repair that I saw.” We knew it all along, but we held it. Because labor, we always tell the guys, “Always have something to give them. Add value. Do something for nothing.” You always knew you were gonna do it, but that’s the secret sauce. And the reason why is because we want to be back.

We call the last step your future. So we always end it with, reinvest in your client. Do something really awesome. If it’s not a repair, then it’s something around the house that you did. Reinvest in them. Thank them. ‘Cause we want to come back. This isn’t a one-and-done. We want to come back, right? So I love that because we’re following that.

Brian Brushwood: So what’s really interesting is the edge cases of what happens when you become wealthy. I like to think of what happens if you became a millionaire overnight. You go to bed, you wake up with this billion-dollar franchise idea, right? What if you went to bed and you woke up the next day world-famous, right? That’s exactly what happened to Kevin Federline. I don’t know if you know that name.

Roy Williams: Britney Spears’ husband.

Brian Brushwood: That’s right. Nobody knew his name. Then all at once, the whole world knew Mr. Britney Spears. And what did he want to do? Be famous for literally anything other than being Mr. Britney Spears. He wanted to go backwards on the circle. So what did he do? Naturally, the dumbest thing possible. He dropped a rap album and guested on the WWE. He was booed out of the auditorium and his rap album was panned, right? So let’s take the exact opposite.

Todd Liles: I really liked that album, too.

Brian Brushwood: Really?

Todd Liles: No.

Brian Brushwood: Okay. Around the same time, imagine that if you got famous overnight, but it was something that you absolutely… Like, what’s… You could do worse than be famous for being Mr. Britney Spears, marrying your childhood sweetheart.

Todd Liles: Yeah, you could be Monica Lewinsky.

Brian Brushwood: Well, as a matter of fact, that exact same time frame, Kim Kardashian had a stolen sex tape, and she did not want to be famous as the stolen sex tape person. But she did not attempt to go backwards on the circle. Instead, she filed an injunction in January. By February, began negotiations. By March, had stuff worked out. By April, had started negotiating with E! Entertainment Television. By the summer, they announced that the new show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, was coming out, which was never high art, never won an Emmy, but they do teach college courses about the cultural impact of it. She took the hand that she was dealt as it was dealt and went forward on the circle, always trending towards her genuine true story and always reinvested.

Todd Liles: So a story got her attention that she figured out how to harvest, and she kept going the only way you can go productively. The illustration to me, particularly when it comes to advertising… And see, because you and I have always been aligned, we’ve always gone the right direction on the circle.

When Brian showed me that for the first time and he told me too many people want to go backwards on the circle, and it’s unbelievably… It’s like you’re just walking into a stone wall when you’re going backwards on the circle. It’s just almost impossible. I’m going, “Yeah, but everybody wants to go directly from story to sale.” And I’m going, “That’s backwards on the circle.” You first have to be satisfied with the attention that you gained and the momentum. And so what did you harvest? A little higher notch in their awareness scale. And then you tell another story and they go, “Oh, I remember this guy. He did me a solid once before.”

So pretty soon you’re in the house and they’re working for a company that you train, and they go in and “Oh, you need me to change this thing right here? This is what’s wrong right here.” And so then you replace it and he says, “Okay, this is what we’re gonna do, blah, blah, blah.” “See, okay, that’s what’s wrong. I’m gonna replace this.” When he comes back, says, “Look, I also noticed that the plenum was leaking right here and it’s sucking down some insulation from the attic down through the wall. So I got some caulking, I went ahead and sealed that for you.” And it’s kind of like, “Oh, well, thanks. How much more do I owe you?”

“No, no, no, I keep caulking in the truck for just that.” ‘Cause a lot of times, other builders, they don’t caulk that and the suction from the plenum, it pulls insulation sometimes down from the attic. And it’s like, “Well, thank you for that.” It’s like, “Great. Call us back if you ever need anything else.” You gave ’em this little gift. You knew that’s why you keep caulking in the truck is because so often you find that the builder left it unsealed.

Brian Brushwood: And of course, this is back to the bunny on the table. That moment, that gift, it’s not a free sample. You’re not the Caulk King of Austin, which sounds like an adult film.

Todd Liles: I think that was her second movie.

Brian Brushwood: Yeah. But the… So in the case of…

Todd Liles: Cut that, Alex.

Brian Brushwood: Yeah.

Todd Liles: But don’t. Keep going.

Todd Liles: All right. All right.

Brian Brushwood: So let’s talk about… Let’s talk about the currency everyone cares about. Business, right? This is where I think most of the clients that Roy and I talk to are dealing with. They already have a business, right? They’re doing a couple of million dollars a year. They just want to do more. They don’t understand. “All I want… Your stories, what do they matter? I just want more customers. I want to purchase it.” So what do they do? They do the dumbest thing possible. They buy a billboard. 100,000 vehicles every day. And they’ll always be able to point to that number and they’ll be able to say it to themselves as they go to sleep.

But they know deep in their hearts that nobody paid more attention to that billboard than they did. And that billboard was nothing but a harvest, not a gift. Instead, what you want to do is do it right. I used to think I was so clever because I figured out all on my own that there was a plumbing and AC company that took all of their white service vans and turned them into one-note comic strips. And I got real excited as I told my friend Roy about Radiant Plumbing, about how each one of them is a little gift, a humble one-note comic chuckle that made me smile, whether it’s somebody praying to a toilet in the sky or using a plunger as a weapon. And Roy’s like, “I’m glad you liked it. I worked very hard on that account.”

Roy Williams: Yeah, I know. So Brad Casebier, the best student in terms of being a business owner, and you would explain to him things and he would go, “Oh, I get it.” He could then do it. I was talking to the private equity guys that bought his company. They were asking for some advice. And I said, “Dudes,” it was a Zoom call, and I said, “There’s Brad Casebier there in the room with you. He has a standing offer to become a Wizard of Ads partner if he ever gets tired of fooling around with plumbing and air conditioning.” I said, “The whole world needs what he does.”

And I said, “All I ever did was open his eyes and meet with him a couple of times a year, had some guys doing some writing and media buying for him.” But he took hold of that campaign on his own and said, “Yeah, I got some ideas,” and I’m going, “You go, boy.” It’s like, that’s some world-class stuff. And so much of the stuff that he did, it’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we kind of taught him how to do that, but the very best stuff he came up with. I mean, he came up with the idea because now he understood story, attention, harvest. Story, attention, harvest. And so he just took that to the next level.

So he was a master of gift-giving. The gift of a smile, the gift of laughter. Anywhere you saw any of his trucks or any of his locations or any of his people. As a matter of fact, John Stewart did two whole episodes on national television with him. Did you know that?

Brian Brushwood: Mm-mm.

Roy Williams: Oh, yeah. Went nuts. He saw some of… There was a person that worked for him that was in Austin, saw some of these ads.

Todd Liles: Was it Stewart or Oliver?

Roy Williams: Yeah, I said Stewart, didn’t I? John Oliver. It was John Oliver. No, John Oliver did two episodes with him and challenged him and brought him back. And it was… I don’t know how many views John Oliver gets, but it’s a lot.

Brian Brushwood: Yeah.

Todd Liles: It was really good.

Brian Brushwood: Well, and plus, that’s usually how you could tell you’re onto a virtuous circle, going the right way on the circle, is when other people try to join in, figuring out what’s in it for them. That means you’ve got actual magic.

Todd Liles: Mm.

Roy Williams: The point being that whenever people finally have that revelation, that epiphany where they go, “Wow, I get it,” and then they take ownership of it and they become a co-creator with people like yourself and people like Todd and his team. And when the people are trying to help you understand how to do this, you go, “Oh, yeah, we could even do this and this and this,” and they come up with their own ideas. Well, now they understand what the idea is. We can think of a million ways to add value.

And it’s just like when the restaurant decides, “You guys have been so great tonight, dessert’s on us.” And now what happens is you’ve run up this huge, huge tab and you’ve obviously had a wonderful time. For the cost of butter and eggs, right, they’re going to make you a real high-ticket customer, more likely to go, “I like those people. They’re good to us.” And they were… And the number of times, seriously, Todd, we’ve all had dinner enough to know that we always jump at a monstrously big ticket. And then when you tip really well, you know what the new thing has become?

Brian Brushwood: What’s this?

Roy Williams: A lot of times, the owner of the restaurant will instruct the waiter to come out with a special bottle of wine that’s a gift from the restaurant. And I’m going, “Okay, I can’t let ’em get away with that. I have to leave my normal tip plus enough money to pay for that bottle of wine.”

Brian Brushwood: Yep.

Roy Williams: And then what happens is… But I still give them credit for being great guys and giving us a bottle of wine. I don’t feel the obligation, I just feel like… What’s it called? Reciprocation.

Todd Liles: Reciprocation.

Brian Brushwood: You just want to give back.

Roy Williams: But at the same time, you never forget the fact that they did that or are always doing something a little bit special for you. And I’m thinking, so when you’re giving somebody… A gift of your attention, whether it’s attention or bottle of wine or whether it’s just a smile, like Brad Casebier, people remember you. They remember how you made them feel. And it makes you more likely to come back. It makes you more likely to come back and to tell your friends. And I’m going, gee, that’s called marketing. But if you said, I told you a story, I ran this ad, but my phone didn’t ring, and I’m going, that’s not how it works. It’s like you have to build this momentum. So thank you for that.

Todd Liles: One of the things that you’re constantly talking about, Roy, is people always want to come here and just do direct call to actions, direct call to actions, as opposed to sales activation. I feel like this is in the line in between, sales activation. This is the origin story, if we want to use that example. It’s the beginning case. It’s the brand, it’s the brandable chunks. It’s who we really are. And then we start putting out interesting origin story campaigns and little attention grabbers that take some time to build, and then we start dropping some sales activation. Then boom. But a lot of the other folks, like you’re saying, go, “Hey, look, this is who we are. We do plumbing.” Direct call to action. “Give me money now.”

Roy Williams: “And today we’re having a 20% off event.”

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Brian Brushwood: Yep.

Todd Liles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Google, Google, Google.

Brian Brushwood: There are times that there’s a right time to harvest. I was surprised to find out the only reason that a windfall is considered a good thing. Do you know the origin of the word windfall? I didn’t know this.

Todd Liles: Since you ask, I’m gonna assume it’s probably got something to do with selling.

Brian Brushwood: No.

Todd Liles: No? Okay.

Roy Williams: Apples.

Brian Brushwood: Yeah, it is. It’s apples. Did you know?

Todd Liles: Yeah, I should have known you’d know.

Brian Brushwood: Story goes, all the trees belonged to the king. And so if you touch an apple, you get your head chopped off. Those are the king’s trees. Unless the storm happens to make one fall on the ground, in which case that’s a good thing for you, the peasant. However, we, anybody who’s watching this who’s a responsible business owner, we are not peasants. We are running a farm, an orchard. And a windfall is a terrible thing because it means that before the migrant labor has been hired, before you planned, a storm came in and knocked everything to the ground. And so you rush out with your ox cart, you fill it up with this underripe fruit, you go to market where the same storm hit everyone else, and you make pennies on the dollar. And then you go back home and you say, “I’m sorry, kids, maybe next year.” That’s what happens if you don’t harvest at the right time.

Todd Liles: God bless you for that because that is such a great example. We have clients that are literally in the roofing business and windfalls hit them, and you think it’s good and you end up finding out it’s not good. Same thing happened with clients during COVID where windfalls hit everybody and they reaped that harvest, but they took out two or three years worth of future sales and now they’re going, “Ugh!” So I love that why windfall is not necessarily the thing you want story. That’s really good.

Brian Brushwood: Keep in mind there’s a counter version of the story. What happens if you never bother to harvest?

Roy Williams: There are artists that I know who just want to out-story their way out of everything. I got a friend of mine who makes a good living on his residuals, but when rent gets tight, he just makes another album. He tries to story his way forward in the circle. And meanwhile, it’s as though all I can picture is him sitting on the front porch looking at his beautiful orchard as day after day the overripe fruit gets more and more wrinkled and eventually falls down to pieces in front of him.

Todd Liles: That wraps up part two, The Psychology of Story and the Power of the Reveal. Next time in part three, we’ll turn the lens on something bigger, which is the future of creativity itself. Brian and Roy explore what AI can and cannot do and why human perception still wins and how technology is changing the creative process for better or for worse. So join us for that one. It’s a mind bender.

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