The Questions Every Content Creator Should Ask | Brad Heureux

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, marketers, media buyers, and business owners. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Brad Heureux, Founder and CEO of Creator Media Network. Brad is a distinguished media and marketing executive with over three decades of industry leadership experience. During his tenure at Comcast Corporate, he successfully created and led Comcast's digital advertising sales division. As a media and marketing consultant, he has been instrumental in building and growing entrepreneurial companies and major media brands. He's currently the visionary founder of Creator Media Network. Brad, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Brad Heureux: Hey, David. Thanks for having me, and thanks for being a creator. David McBee: Well, I'm so glad you're here. We should probably just let everyone know I'm the bald guy with glasses with the black background. You're the bald guy with glasses with the cool background. Brad Heureux: Nice. David McBee: You'd be surprised how many bald guys with glasses I interview. I mean, I think we are the stereotypical digital media folks out here. Brad Heureux: I think it's a rite of passage after a certain point in the career. David McBee: All right, let's get to business. All right, so everyone is talking about content creation and the role that it plays in marketing, but you actually take that to another level by talking about a creator mindset. Tell us about that. Brad Heureux: Yeah, so I think, in my career, I've always looked at any medium and anything with advertising and marketing as helping clients understand that they need to think outside the box and have a creator mindset to what they do. But in recent years, of course, now being a creator means something completely different. Creators are the new visionary creators of content across all platforms, social, streaming, you name it, Creators drive everything, and they're becoming the new communities, and they're driving interesting content that connects with people, and then they're also driving the commerce side of what that means to turn themselves into businesses. So, we kind of come at everything from helping a business, a brand, or creator think like and put on this creator mindset before they approach what it takes to kind of build brands in this new space. If you're a creator, become a business. If you're a business, to think more and act more like a creator. David McBee: There are a lot of people out there calling themselves creators. Do you see people making a lot of mistakes, in your opinion, about how they go about that? Brad Heureux: Definitely. Not necessarily because they don't have the desire to be a creator, but I think the minute you put on the creator hat and you think about your business, your brand, or whatever it might be, it requires strategy and understanding of how you're going to create content that engages. And really, the thought behind being a media company, if you will, and thinking about all the things you need to do to be successful is something that I think they might underestimate. At the same time, certainly, there's been some incredible creators that have done phenomenal things with no experience and no background. They just jumped in and have learned it very well. David McBee: What is your best advice to someone entering the field of creation or someone who's already in it and maybe they're stuck in a rut? Brad Heureux: Yeah, maybe take a step back, stop for a minute. Maybe do the thinking you didn't do from the beginning about who your audience is, what you're trying to create, why you're trying to create it, what it looks like long-term. Are you thinking too small? Are you thinking too big? Are you thinking in a niche that isn't really something you can capitalize on? If you're a business, have you really thought about the effect you want to have on the greater community for your business? Do you want to scale that internationally? Is it something you want to do locally? Really, just strategic thought and taking a step back and finding people to help you put a plan together before you just start creating. I hear a lot of, "Just start creating," and I don't think I agree completely with just start creating. David McBee: No, I think everyone should rewind 30 seconds and get a pencil out or a pen and just jot down all those questions you asked. You kind of gave like the ultimate to-do list for a creator. Do you have any examples of things that you've created for brands or agencies that have been really successful? Brad Heureux: Sure. Yeah. I don't want to get myself in trouble and say some of them are less exciting, but we have everything from car dealers to law firms to pure creators. A fun example would be Dr. Saxlove, which is a saxophone player that years back wanted to create saxophone music content and set about putting this strategy we talked about with beautiful images behind the channel. The channel now has over a million subscribers and does some incredible numbers with engaging content while the creator spends very efficient time creating content that they love, that the audience loves. It's a successful business model for advertisers. So, those and lots of other channels all over the place, across all verticals, have been inspiring, really. I think that there's this new level now where it doesn't require a million subscribers to be successful. You could have a thousand subscribers if you do the right thing and tell the right story, have the right strategy. You could turn those into a successful venture for yourself. David McBee: I don't think we can have a conversation about content creation without talking about AI. Are you pro-AI, anti-AI? What are your thoughts on it? Brad Heureux: I love AI. ChatGPT, yesterday, went down for 20 minutes and we were all freaking out like, "Oh my gosh! When's it going to come back?" Because it just shut down everything we were working on. I like AI and talent or talent with AI in their hands. If you use it intelligently and you bring together your creativity and the right people's input into AI, I think it's an incredible tool. I think it'll only affect things more positively. No matter how good we are with, whether it's media planning or audience building or content creation, having the tools of AI just seems like something that I fully embrace and I think it'll only be embraced more. David McBee: Do you see people using AI in poor ways? Brad Heureux: Yeah, no, absolutely. If you're not disciplined to the process and disciplined to putting your spin and using it to help you and assist you and you're just regurgitating AI language, then it's lazy. It's certainly not going to engage. It's not going to help you get done what you're trying to get done. David McBee: Yeah. All right. So, when advertisers look at digital marketing as a whole, they see a lot of different options. They've got search, they've got social, they've got online video, now streaming TV is really big. It can be very overwhelming. How do you feel advertisers should determine where they invest their resources? Brad Heureux: Great question. And really, we try to, first and foremost during discovery, get them to focus on what the outcome is they're looking for and who are the audiences that they're trying to engage. We know audiences are going to get engaged with content across omni-channel, experiences across all platforms. So, we don't put emphasis so much on which platform, which network, more about what audiences are you trying to engage, and let's build plans and organize strategies that allow you to reach and engage those consumers across multiple devices, multiple platforms, multiple networks in a way that's compelling and puts the right message in front of the right people at the right time on the right platform to get the results you're after. So, really being consumer-centric, audience-first, data-driven, thinking about who those people are on the other side would be my best suggestion for businesses looking to effectively market. David McBee: You know what I'm really getting out of this conversation is you seem to ask a lot of questions before you move forward. Am I hearing that right? Brad Heureux: Absolutely. David McBee: Yeah. I think that's a real takeaway from this interview, and I think it's worth going back and listening to some of the questions that you listed out because they're really powerful in creating a direction for people to go. So, thank you for that. Brad Heureux: Sure. I mean, it's a complex space, and now, if you think about anybody or any business owner or any creator, you've got the brand of you. You need to ask the questions in this space. Are you the key person of influence? Are you the brand? Richard Branson has a bigger following personally than Virgin does, after all the years of building Virgin. So, do you need to think about that for your business? Do you need to have that strategy for yourself as the brand of you and how you'll fulfill on community content connecting to people and driving a monetization model out of that? And then, you've got to put the brand hat on for your business. Now, what do I think about my brand and how does that play in that same process? It's a lot to think about, and I'm sure a lot of business owners aren't necessarily sitting back and thinking that way, but it's necessary in today's space as people look for authentic leaders and companies and brands that they can engage with. Without deep discovery, we certainly can't get that information to get a starting point for our client. David McBee: Yeah, I think that's the theme of this entire interview is discovery before moving forward. Brad Heureux: Absolutely. David McBee: Yeah. All right, so before we wrap things up, I like to ask all my guests, do you have a favorite podcast or a book that you feel has been instrumental in your success? Brad Heureux: My favorite book, I think overall, has been Michael Gerber's, The E-Myth. I think the applications of the E-Myth and processes and systems apply to the things that we're talking about today, even though it's dated a little bit, but it has been fantastic. I listen to so many different podcasts. We have one that we put together, which was a morning show radio group in Detroit called the Drew Lane podcast, that we're fans of course. But I listen to yours, I listen to many industry podcasts, probably too many to think of. There's a new one with Jason Alexander from Seinfeld that, on the entertainment side, I've been... I forget who his partner is that's doing the podcast, but that's been one of my entertainment one recently. David McBee: All right, great. We'll check that out. All right, so what is the best way for our listeners to learn more about you? Brad Heureux: They can certainly always go to our website and they can go to LinkedIn, to our company page, and just look at Creator Media Network and you will find us. David McBee: All right. Thank you so much for being my guest today. Brad Heureux: Thank you, David. I appreciate it. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching Simpli.fi TV. Please help us out with a like, comment, share, or review, and be sure to follow or subscribe to be informed about new episodes. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored, of course, by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry-leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit Simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.