Behind the Brand with Bryan Elliott

Brendan Kane built a social media following of one million people in 30 days. Not with a big budget. Not with a team of 40 like Gary Vaynerchuk. Just relentless testing and a framework most people overlook entirely. Kane is the founder and CEO of HookPoint and the author of three books: "1 Million Followers," "Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a Three Second World," and "The...

Robert Greene has sold over twenty million copies of The 48 Laws of Power. His books are favorites of rapper 50 Cent and millions of people trying to get a grip on the dynamics of power. They've also been banned in prisons. He doesn't lose sleep over any of it. In this episode, Greene takes me through the winding road that led to his first bestseller: 60-plus jobs, years living across Eu...

Most executives treat sleep as a variable. Something to compress when things get busy. Something to fix later. That’s the ROI brain talking: Sleep is overhead, not output. The science disagrees. One in three people globally struggle with sleep, and the effects are not limited to grogginess. Poor sleep is linked to cognitive decline, impaired decision making, elevated anxiety, weakened immunity, an...

Life Advice That Doesn't Suck  aka "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" flips the self-help script. Instead of telling you to think positive and chase happiness, Mark Manson argues that life is full of problems and always will be. The goal isn't to avoid struggle. It's to pick the struggles worth having. What you choose to care about defines who you are. Manson builds his...

Perhaps one of the most aptly named individuals I’ve met, James Clear possesses a clairvoyant ability to articulate his understanding and mastery of habit formation.    His book Atomic Habits , which eclipsed the sales speed of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , has sold nearly 20 million copies and is one of the top books recommended by high performers.  However, he didn’t set out to write...

Jocko Willink’s story reads like an adventure novel that takes us from the serene landscapes of a small New England town into Navy SEAL training, the Iraq War battlegrounds, and a multifaceted civilian life of entrepreneurship and leadership consulting. “I always wanted to be a commando of some kind as soon as I realized that you could actually get paid to carry a machine gun,” he says. Joining th...

Seth told me, "It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you’re headed in the wrong direction." He's right.  Here’s my attempt to create a hierarchy for this idea: 1. Strategy = This is your approach, given all the factors, systems, games, players, and environments. It’s about who , how , and why . 2. Objectives = To-do items or steps on the path to help you achieve the goal. It’s...

Do you ever stare at a beautiful product and wonder what stories are hidden behind its journey? The culinary poetry of the HexClad brand products begins with a hypnotizing hexagonal pattern with an intricate layer that looks like a futuristic industrial honeycomb. The brand’s hallmark design isn’t just for style points but is the result of countless refinements, merging non-stick convenience with...

The Red Hot Chili Peppers’s Chad Smith is betting that music education is key to preserving the creative thinkers businesses need most... In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson stood on a TED stage and asked a simple question: Do schools kill creativity? 76 million people have watched that talk. It’s still the most-viewed TED Talk in history. It was my honor to sit down with Sir Ken in 2014 and talk about this...

Alex Hormozi built a portfolio of companies worth over $200 million before he turned 35. No outside funding. No famous co-founder. No viral moment that handed him an audience. He did it by studying the math of business more seriously than almost anyone in his generation, then teaching everything he learned in public. That last part is what separates him from most founders. He gave away the playboo...

Nobody warns you about the first time… One morning you wake up, look in the mirror, and your face has started doing something on its own. You have hair! It starts by looking like peach fuzz or dirt above your lip. But it’s not a problem and you’re proud it’s there.  And usually without anyone showing you what to do or handing you a manual, you pick up a razor. Just like that—and hopefully without...

In 2015 Todd Meleney, a young inexperienced newcomer, helped build Nobull from a three-person startup to $250 million in annual revenue. Then just 18 months ago he walked away to do it again, from scratch, in one of the most competitive markets on the planet. The result is While on Earth , a performance wellness footwear and apparel brand he launched in fall 2024 out of Providence, Rhode Island. L...

Eugene Alletto went from making cold calls in a Wolf of Wall Street style boiler room to building bedgear into a top-10 sleep industry brand serving 33+ million customers. In this episode, he shares the counterintuitive strategies that turned bedding from a commodity into a personalized science. Key Topics: Why he avoids big box stores and focuses on trained salespeople instead The "$20 shirt...

In both business and life, endurance, not speed, is of the utmost importance. Jesse Itzler's first book was rejected by 15 publishers before number 16 gave him a shot. 30 is how many years Jesse’s been running races without winning a single win. And 100 is roughly how many miles Jesse covered in his longest ultramarathon, races that taught him the one business lesson most entrepreneurs never...

Nir Zohar, President & COO of Wix , is not your typical tech bro from Silicon Valley. After doing 3 years of mandatory military service in his home country of Israel, his skills were noticed and he was asked to extend his term to 6 years where he spent time on small vessel ship helping to keep his country safe.  By the mid 2000s he was out of the navy and back on dry land trying to figure out...

Kentaro Yoshimura and his business partner Ryan Chen built Neuro from zero to nearly $100 million in just ten short years. This is just part of the story... Check out Neuro here: https://neurogum.com/ Special thanks to our sponsors: About a year ago I was working out of a co-working space with a private office and studio in West Hollywood, and honestly? It was fine but felt more like a college dor...

If you've ever bought a car from a dealership, there's a good chance it was one of your worst experiences in life.  I promise you that this podcast will teach almost everything you need to know about how to never get ripped off at the car dealership again!  RussFlipsWhips is one of the most popular automotive content creators on social media and he really shares all the secrets.  Check o...

Kass and Mike Lazerow are serial entrepreneurs and investors in brands like Liquid Death and best known as the cofounders of Golf.com and Buddy Media, a software company that sold to Salesforce.com for $745 million. In this episode you'll learn how to pick your next big investment. Check out their new book: https://kassandmike.com/the-book With a lifetime of stories from decades of building b...

In an era where companies wage costly battles to solve the return-to-office puzzle, Industrious has quietly cracked the code on harnessing the power of experience. What began in 2013 as a single location founded by childhood friends Jamie Hodari and Justin Stewart has grown into the world's largest premium flexible workspace provider, with 200 locations across 10 countries. The company's...

The world's largest hotel chains spend billions on marketing, yet if you closed your eyes inside their rooms, you couldn't tell them apart. Meanwhile, a $200 sneaker company can instantly make you feel something about who you are and what you stand for. Why? Marketing legend Seth Godin reveals it comes down to the difference between having a logo and building a true brand. Seth Godin rev...

Kevin Espiritu, a guy from San Diego, makes over $50 million a year from Gardening. Kevin started out playing poker online to pay for college. He tried to be an accountant, drummer in a band, web designer and SEO expert-- and eventually discovered blogging and Youtube. In 6 years he's built an Epic Gardening business https://www.epicgardening.com/  Special Thanks to our Sponsor! If you know m...

This segment is called, The One Thing... If you asked me what's the one thing you should learn from negotiation boss, Chris Voss, it's this:  Splitting the difference is actually terrible negotiation advice. Conventional business wisdom about finding win-win solutions and meeting in the middle is fundamentally flawed, according to former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss. After years of...

Welcome to the Wellness Era: Gyms are the New Third Space Behind the Brand with EOS Fitness The pandemic killed the coffee shop culture. When Starbucks and local cafes removed their chairs and cut off WiFi access during COVID-19, millions of remote workers, freelancers, and students lost their favorite hangout spots. But remember Jeff Goldblum’s quote from the movie Jurassic Park ? “ Life finds a...

Ryan Hashemi started making Youtube videos in high school in the early days. He quickly learned the difference between "watchable" and "unwatchable content." A majority of unwatchable videos these days are made by brands with good intentions but piss-poor taste. What do these videos look like? They come in a variety of shapes and sizes but these boring videos are basically thin...

Hi everyone, If you're new here--welcome!  It's my tradition to kick off the new year with this message about reinventing yourself.   I founded this show in 2008 headed into the Great Recession to solve my own problem of not knowing what to do about my struggling brand and start up. I started interviewing people I knew had the answers and the rest is history.  Behind the Brand with Bryan...