Adrian Boysel / Branding, Marketing & Love Gangster

Adrian Boysel's story is a testament to the power of resilience and determination.

Growing up in a tumultuous environment, facing homelessness, and overcoming numerous personal struggles, Adrian has carved out a successful career as a social impact entrepreneur and award-winning designer.

In this episode, Adrian shares his journey, the mentors who shaped his path, and his philosophy on branding and marketing.

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, Adrian's insights and experiences will leave you inspired and motivated to pursue your dreams.

Key Points:

1. Adrian's story of resilience and transformation.
2. The role of mentors in Adrian's success.
3. The intersection of creativity and business.
4. The power of a well-crafted brand strategy.
5. Practical tips for creating an irresistible offer.

Link: Brandbutler.ai/headsmack
Link: AdrianBoysel.com

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni [00:00:00]:
Hey, welcome to the Head Smack podcast. My name is Paul Povolni, and I'm excited to have a fellow brand guy on the podcast today, Adrian Boycell. So glad to have you, man.

Adrian Boysel [00:00:11]:
Thank you, brother. Appreciate being here.

Paul Povolni [00:00:14]:
Adrian is a social impact entrepreneur and award winning designer, certified and passionate about content creation and digital marketing. He's done a lot of stuff. He's just a young whippersnapper, but he's had quite a career. And so I look forward to hearing all about it today and sharing some head smacks with you with Adrian the Misfit. Adrian, so glad you're here. And I usually, you know, I'm into superheroes. I love, I love origin stories, and so I like to start with people's origin stories. And so you can go as far back as you want to, but tell me a little bit about the making of Adrian Boisel, the love gangster.

Adrian Boysel [00:00:53]:
Yeah. So I grew up in Sacramento, California, with my grandparents. My dad and my mom split when I was just a baby. My dad took me, my mom took my sister, and they both had just very rough young, you know, I would say late teens and early twenties, and so they were not ready to be parents. And so my grandparents raised me. And then when I was four years old, my grandfather passed away right in front of me, died of a heart attack due to alcohol. And that was kind of my wake up to life and to the real world and smack of reality. It was a big first head smack for me, right?

Paul Povolni [00:01:27]:
Yeah.

Adrian Boysel [00:01:27]:
And it was a really big day. And so I ended up going to live with my dad and my stepmom. He had remarried by that time, and at that time, she was about 21, 22 years old, didn't know how to raise kids and never had her own kid and inherited me. And my dad was off being Mister businessman, being Mister partier like he always was, and wasn't around that much. So he was pretty much my stepmom, and I. And I was a very headstrong kid that was missing his mom, missing his grandfather, and even missing his grandmother, who was really the mom to me up until that point. So grew up in a broken home, and there was a lot of consequences of that. Went to school, got in a lot of trouble.

Adrian Boysel [00:02:07]:
Didn't listen to the teachers at the back of the room drawing all day. Been a lifelong artist. That's just who I've always been. Always been drawing. You know, doing my own thing. Started my own business because my grandfather was an entrepreneur, had a video business. My dad took that video business over for a while. So graphics, video, art, you know, anything like that was right in my wheelhouse all the way through up until high school and ended up being on the streets at 16 years old and lived on the streets for nearly a year until I met a mentor of mine who took me off the streets and really helped me out.

Adrian Boysel [00:02:42]:
I ended up meeting my mom at 17 years old, my biological mom, for the first time since I was a baby and started to build a relationship with her. And that was off to a rocky start as well, and went through a lot of highs and lows, but that mentor was really there for me. He's no longer with us today, but he was a huge part of me healing my relationship with my mom and really getting back into contact with my dad and that side of my family and my grandmother. And so just a lot of challenge, a lot of struggle. There was a lot of physical, verbal, emotional abuse that was happening in my household due to my dad and my stepmom. And I had to learn to become very resilient. Gotten a lot of fights as a kid. Was pretty fearless about almost anything.

Adrian Boysel [00:03:23]:
There really wasn't anything you could put in my way that I was going to be scared to do, whether it was jumping dirt bikes or bicycles or skateboarding, whatever it is. I was always doing extreme sports, and I loved to fight. There was just something about fighting that was kind of a passion of mine, but I just had a lot of anger in my heart. And when I found the Lord, when I was. I always knew the Lord, but I wasn't walking with it. And I didn't really call myself a Christian until I was about 20 years old when I got baptized, thanks to an employee of mine, he invited me to his church, and that radically kind of changed my whole life and changed my whole walk. And I started to get a lot of healing that way.

Paul Povolni [00:04:00]:
Wow, that's amazing. So you mentioned that pretty rough and crazy upbringing. What led you to the homelessness? What was that trigger that led you there?

Adrian Boysel [00:04:11]:
So my dad, basically, I wasn't doing great in school, and my dad had very strict expectations of me. And at one point, he got fed up with the fighting and said, pack your stuff and get out or I'll pack it for you. And I was like, okay. So I packed a bag and started walking. And I had just found. Part of the catalyst of that was I had just found my mom around that time and kind of located my mom and my sister, and he was not happy about that. So I ended up calling them and kind of letting them know what was going down and getting to start to build a relationship with them. But, yeah, it was just the father that wanted no sense of responsibility and discipline in his life.

Paul Povolni [00:04:57]:
Yeah. Wow. And so what? So you got out of that. You mentioned the mentor. What were some of the things that the mentor started in still filling into you, and where did that relationship come about?

Adrian Boysel [00:05:10]:
You know, he had a lot of really great sayings. Don't pull the mask off the old lone ranger and don't cuss the cat for being a cat. And I've used that throughout my whole life. When people act a certain way or disappoint me or act out of integrity, I'm not surprised. Right? Don't cuss being a cat. So a lot of principles like that. But he taught me how to draw on a level that I had never drawn before. Like Kiaroscuro, like black and white type of charcoal, drawing a.

Adrian Boysel [00:05:34]:
He taught me about just building relationships with people. He was an avid reader. He had read thousands, literally had read thousands and thousands of books. I mean, his house probably had 500 books, but thousands of books. He read, you know, two or three books a week, and that's all he did. He was retired, and so he didn't. He didn't work a job, and so he just read all day. Gifted musician.

Adrian Boysel [00:05:56]:
So I just learned about life, about struggles, about his pain, and just some of his viewpoints on life. And he grew up in the psychedelic era, right? David Bogey.

Paul Povolni [00:06:05]:
Yeah, yeah.

Adrian Boysel [00:06:06]:
The deadheads and all that. He grew up in the seventies and eighties. He was born in 55. And so I grew up in the seventies and experienced acid and all those things. And I was straight laced my entire childhood, my entire teenage years, and even into my late teens and early twenties. I mean, it wasn't until I was, like, 21, I think, where I ever tried pot for the first time, you.

Paul Povolni [00:06:25]:
Know, really, even from being homeless, even during the homelessness, never went into that well.

Adrian Boysel [00:06:31]:
So I was always told that my mom wanted nothing to do with me, and that was a huge shot to the heart. And I was also told that she was a total drug addict, and that was why she wanted nothing to do with any of her kids, because she has five other kids on top of me. And so I thought, okay, well, drugs are bad. And I watched my grandfather die in front of me because of alcohol. So I was like, well, alcohol is bad, so I'm gonna avoid both of those like the plague.

Paul Povolni [00:06:51]:
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And so this mentor, maybe you shared it and I missed it. How did you meet how did you meet him?

Adrian Boysel [00:06:58]:
He was actually my best friend from high school's uncle, and I crashed on my best friend's couch one night and was woken up in the middle of the night by his buddy Dan, who poured a bunch of mustard on my mouth while I was sleeping. And I was at a low of lows, of course, right. Alone, and had it out with him in the living room. And they told me, you can't stay here. And so his uncle showed up the next day, and I met him, and we immediately hit it off. And he's like, you need somewhere to stay? And I was like, yeah. He's like, I need somebody to house sit for me while I go to my friend and take care of him. He's got diabetes.

Adrian Boysel [00:07:28]:
And I was like, cool, no problem. And we just. The art and history. I'm a huge history buff. And he was. I mean, I can ask him anything about Sacramento or history, and he would just run for hours on facts and stories, and he was just an amazing storyteller.

Paul Povolni [00:07:43]:
Yeah. Yeah. And so he also was a creative. And, you know, of course, you were a lifelong doodler and artist and whatever, you know. When did you realize the potential of your creativity?

Adrian Boysel [00:08:01]:
Well, what's funny about that is my stepmom told me when I was about eight or nine years old. And I don't want to say the wrong thing in terms of, like, she wasn't a horrible person. She just was. She didn't have the tools or the resources or the support from my dad to really be the parents that she could have been to me. So she did the best with what she could, but there were some really sweet, tender, loving, caring moments from her that I got to experience in my life. One of the things that she said to me was, Adrienne, I don't know what you're going to do someday when you grow up, but I know it's going to have something to do with computers and art, because I was just obsessed with drawing. Every Easter was my favorite holiday because I got boxes of crayons and colored pencils, paper in my Easter basket every year. So that was the holiday of all holidays for me.

Adrian Boysel [00:08:41]:
So she knew I was an artist, and she saw this rise of computers, and she told me that then. So she had planted a seed in my subconscious all the way back then. And so when I was in high school, I was doing video production. Started with beginner, intermediate, and then advanced video production. Won an award out of all the kids in the whole school for the whole area, ended up getting to go to this news station, got to go to these, what they call the Sacramento Public Relations awards, and meet all these news anchors and celebrities and things like that. And my passion for video was going to follow my grandfather's footsteps. My dream was military and then doing video production. Those are the two things I wanted to do.

Adrian Boysel [00:09:17]:
And I knew my art would somehow kind of figure into that, but that was just a hobby, and that was just something I did for fun. Well, when I got out of high school, I was doing nightlife promotions as a side hustle on top of selling phones, selling cars, selling home loans. Throughout that whole time, I had been pro running club events, and I had gotten another mentor named Larry, and he started asking me to do nightclub flyers. I'd already been doing some business cards for my dad's insurance business and little stuff in Photoshop, which my brother helped me discover. But I started really developing a knack for Photoshop and just doing design in general. Then I kind of became obsessed with this. So I had this video skill. Now I have this other skill that I've stacked of graphic design, plus my artistic abilities, and I was just really kind of creating something special.

Adrian Boysel [00:09:58]:
And after about two years of hanging out with my boy Larry, my mentor, every day, he was like, dude, you need to shut this nightlife thing down and just go all in on your graphic design. And I was like, wow, dude, that's a great idea. He's like, you can make so much money doing that and printing. There's no reason why you need to be doing this nightlife stuff anymore. It's not for you. And I was like, cool. And so I took his advice. I followed it.

Adrian Boysel [00:10:16]:
I implemented it immediately. Handed off the nightlife business to my friend Natalie, who still kind of runs it almost to a degree today, and just went all in on my graphic design business. And, yeah, the rest is pretty much history on that.

Paul Povolni [00:10:29]:
Yeah, yeah. And so how did the graphic design business go? Like, were you serving a certain clientele? You know, you mentioned the business cards and stuff like that.

Adrian Boysel [00:10:37]:
Yeah.

Paul Povolni [00:10:38]:
Was there a market that you were serving best with that?

Adrian Boysel [00:10:40]:
Yeah. So this is a great part of my story. So I actually had some twists and turns there. I was on a great track. Things were going well about six months earlier before I actually started that business. While I was doing my side hustle just to try to survive, I got into a car accident, and I had let my insurance lapse because I couldn't afford it. And I had been staying at my dad's briefly for, like, literally a month. And I called my dad, help me, help me.

Adrian Boysel [00:11:03]:
What do I do? And he's like, he was an insurance agent. He's like, hey, I want you to take your car, tow it to your house, get a policy with esurance, because it's all online today. Grab that policy. And then I want you to wait two weeks, and then you're going to file a policy, and you're going to say, the accident just happened right around the corner from your house. And I was like, okay. I was like, can I get in trouble for that? He's like, yeah, but if you listen to my instructions, you'll be okay. Long story short, I was not okay. Ended up getting in trouble for it.

Adrian Boysel [00:11:28]:
Spent 30 days in jail. 31 days in a jail in the area that I'm in. I took that time. And so I remember standing on the back patio with my boy Larry, who owned this bar that I was designing the flyers for. I was like, my life is over. I wasn't, like, actually crying. I was, like, down and depressed. And he's like, I'm like, my life is over.

Adrian Boysel [00:11:45]:
I can't believe I'm listening to my dad and he's ruined my life, and I'm never gonna be able to escape him. He's like, listen, dude, you need to separate yourself from your dad. This is not the end of your life. It's just a misdemeanor. Do your time and focus on becoming the best that you can. While you're there. Read books. Like, level yourself up and use this as a turning point for your life.

Adrian Boysel [00:12:03]:
And I was like, okay. And again, I listened to everything he said. So I read Donald Trump's book, which was a huge waste of time. I read rich dad, poor dad. I read a bunch of different books in there, like, three or four books in 30 days. And I filled myself up and I wrote my entire business plan for, at the time, what was called Roseville printing. Yeah, I got out 31 days later. I'd been working out every day.

Adrian Boysel [00:12:24]:
I mean, it was in great shape. And I started Roselle printing from a tiny little, I'm not exaggerating, a hundred, maybe 100 sqft with no window, in a little office suite where I had a futon couch. And I slept on that futon couch for three months and worked my table off till two or three in the morning, going to the club, handing out business cards that were red, that had three promotional offers on the business cards. Everybody at the club handed them out to people just, like, trying to network and build as many relationships as I can Larry's referrals. And within six months I opened up a retail store in the town that I grew up in that had over 50,000 cars going by. And so I brought in my friend from high school who was just a young kid who had just graduated, and I made him a sign shaker. And then I got a girl, wife, beat her with blonde hair. She was out there shaking the sign and I was making like $500 to $1,000 a day at 19, you know.

Paul Povolni [00:13:15]:
Wow.

Adrian Boysel [00:13:15]:
So my, my tactic and strategy was I'm going to be the same day graphic design, web design, sign guy, where people come in, sit down, I'll design their stuff right there in front of them and show them how it all goes together. Design their logos, their brands, their flyers, their signage, all of it. And they'll walk with it, walk away with it in hand. And so I did that. And in two and a half years, I had over 3000 clients. I ended up making some stupid business moves and moved to that location, to downtown Sacramento, thinking, well, now I got 3000 sqft, but lost 70% of my business clientele that I had in the town that I grew up in. I thought they were going to follow. Yeah, yeah, come with me.

Adrian Boysel [00:13:53]:
Right? I could have just opened up two locations and had blown up even more. So I ended up selling that business because of all the pressures and stresses and the ups and downs and roller coasters. And I sold that business to an old boss of mine with the intention of still being the CEO of that company and let him come to find out. He just wanted to take my business model, take my, my strategies, take all my processes and wrap them into his current direct mail business and steal my IAP basically for buy it for as little as he possibly could and just push me out by being extremely abusive. And I just had no tolerance for that. And so I resigned from my own company. After 40 days after selling it, I resigned. Okay, well, now what? And then that's when the whole marketing journey started with Google Ads.

Adrian Boysel [00:14:35]:
And I already knew SEO and I was like, I'm going to do the marketing thing. Now. I see online marketing and digital marketing. This is 2011, right before the big boom. Like, I see marketing being the future and Google Ads is like fishing with dynamite. I mean, this is going to be such a no brainer.

Paul Povolni [00:14:51]:
Well, it sounded like you got pretty fired up and pretty motivated after your stint in jail and, you know, you had time to work out, to read books. Was there anything in particular out of the books that you remember that stood out, that set that fire underneath you.

Adrian Boysel [00:15:08]:
Yeah. You know, I think, you know, the rich dad and the poor dad in the story of rich dad, poor dad with Robert Kiyosaki was a huge lesson for me. And I was looking at the people in my life and who I had in proximity with me. And I think that was probably the biggest lesson is I had this poor dad who struggled, who was unreliable, who was inconsistent, who partied, who drank, who chased women, who gawked at women, who just objectified women. And then I had these men in my life, thank God, literally, the Lord put these people in my life like my uncle Jim and my uncle Bob, who were strong male influences, right? They were, turn your hat on forward, boy. Don't put your hat on a little pump like your dad, right? Making comments like that, dirt bikes, camping, fishing, shooting, you know, these were real men. And then I had Larry as well, who was, you know, prison guard, gang task force, you know, just incredibly successful entrepreneur, larger than life character. I mean, six foot, 4200, an 8300 pound dude, and just shredded, tattooed from, you know, pretty much neck all the way down, just a tight titan, larger than life Titan.

Adrian Boysel [00:16:14]:
And so I was like, those are the fathers and the kind of the mentors of my life. And I want to start living and doing things the right way, which is usually the hard way, but I'm not afraid of the hard thing. So I'm just going to do things the hard way, even though it's might take me longer. And I'm going to do things the right way. I'm not going to try to take shortcuts like my dad did. And the one thing my uncle told me, it was a, like my uncle Bob, he said, your dad could have been really successful if he had just stuck to one thing. But the problem is he jumped from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, and he never stuck to it long enough. And so when I got into graphic design, I was like, this is it.

Adrian Boysel [00:16:46]:
I'm gonna be a graphic designer for the rest of my life. So what people are gonna know me for, they're gonna know me as a creative. Now, obviously, I've skill stacked on top of that, and, you know, I do a lot more than just that now, but I've stayed in the same industry of marketing and, you know, helping small businesses and even large corporations. Now that whole entire time, I haven't jumped from industry to industry to industry or job to job.

Paul Povolni [00:17:06]:
Yeah. And so, you know, there's quite a bit of difference between, you know, just being a designer and being a marketer, where did. Where did that transition happen to you when you realized the difference? And what did you change about what you were doing to transition into a marketer?

Adrian Boysel [00:17:25]:
Well, you're going to see a theme here. So in 2011, Larry called me. I was in Illinois helping my mom deal with a family crisis there, and I had been out there for about eight months. And he calls me up, he's like, hey, what are you doing? And I'm like, just got done doing a Google training. Learned how to do Google Ads. I know how to do SEO and all this stuff now, and I've really learned a lot. I already know a signage, like, got so many skills that just gonna start helping people continue to do graphic design and marketing stuff, and I'm gonna focus more on the digital marketing side of things. And he's like, oh, you should come back out here.

Adrian Boysel [00:17:54]:
I'm working for a home improvement company. We're doing about 800 grand a year. I'm running their sales division. I think you could come run their marketing division. Why don't you come out here and help me? And I'm like, sweet. So I bought a freaking rv, drove out to California, back home, and immediately started with a company called Cintral. And I became their marketing guy in about 30, 45 days. Took over all their marketing, yellow page ads.

Adrian Boysel [00:18:17]:
I mean, literally, the pitch, books, presentation, books, sales books, website, vehicle graphics, storefront graphics, yard signs, direct mail. I mean, all their online ads, Yelp ads, Google Ads, SEO. I was doing everything for them, and they happened to be, you know, successful enough to where they were able to hire some really high level players. And I got another mentor.

Paul Povolni [00:18:37]:
Nice.

Adrian Boysel [00:18:37]:
And that mentor's name was Bradford. Dighton. Bradford. I don't know why he went by D. Bradford, because his name, Dighton, I always thought was the coolest name. And so he went by Bradford, and I bring him in a brochure that I designed, and we had grown close over, like, the first 30, 45 days. And I show him this brochure I designed. I was like, check this out.

Adrian Boysel [00:18:54]:
Dighton. And he's like, wow, this is really beautifully designed. He goes, can I ask you a question? I'm like, yeah. He goes, what's the point?

Paul Povolni [00:19:02]:
Oh, wow.

Adrian Boysel [00:19:03]:
I was like, what? What do you mean, what's the point? He's like, what's the point of this brochure? What's the objective? And I was like, to buy a mattress? I think that's pretty self explanatory. And he's like, no, tell me in here, where in this brochure, it says to buy a mattress. And I was like, my jaw kind of like, hit the floor in that moment. I'm like. He's like, let me tell you something. You have a knack for marketing, and some of the content in here is really great. He's like, but there's no strategy behind this. There's no scientific process.

Adrian Boysel [00:19:32]:
There's no proven framework that you have here. He goes, this is what you're missing. And I was like, what? I was like, will you teach me? And he's like, yes. So for literally two years, I sat side by side with him in his office, and I literally asked him, I mean, probably a billion questions, more questions I could ever even keep track of. How does this work? And how does that work? And what's logos, pathos and ethos? And what's the logical, ethical, and emotional? And what's the science of marketing, and how does the analytics work? And so I just pulled that. He'd been doing marketing already for 38 years at that point, and he's long since been retired because that was 2011, 2012. And so, you know, he was like, you know, you just need this proven process. So many people out there are just doing marketing like fly by the sea.

Adrian Boysel [00:20:14]:
They're a pants are just trying to come up with good ideas and throwing stuff at the wall and hoping that it sticks. That's not a strategy. You need to have a proven marketing plan. What is your marketing plan? And so that's when I started to learn the marketing planning process, and I started getting my hands on marketing books. There were marketing planning books, ultimate sales machine, things like that. And I just really started to sharpen my axe around marketing planning. And then after about, you know, around that two and a half year mark, he ended up leaving. And so did I within a couple months.

Adrian Boysel [00:20:42]:
And that company at that point, was already doing about 22 million a year between the marketing that I was doing and the sales that Larry was doing, and we just blew that company up. And I left to go start my agency. And so in the end of 2014, I went and got a little office with my little brother, and, you know, towards the beginning of, end of 14, beginning of 15, opened up this office and started doing rank and rent websites for artificial turf, H Vac, cell phone repair, limousines, all and sort of building these rank and went rent websites and was making a lot of freaking money. I mean, I was doing like 25, $30,000 a month from growing revenue. And I was like, this is huge. And then in 30 days, I lost $20,000 a month in revenue as some of these people went out of business, overextended their things. And so next thing you know, I'm, like, struggling and trying to figure out how to pay the bills. I gotta ditch this rank and rent thing and just go start doing client work.

Adrian Boysel [00:21:34]:
Thanks to one of my friends who was in ministry, Corey. He's like, dude, the rank and rent stuff is cool as, like, a side thing, but you need to go out and help clients. And I'm like, okay, cool. So started bringing on more clients, and, you know, there's the roller coaster of that journey, too.

Paul Povolni [00:21:46]:
And I think something that you shared earlier that I want to circle back to is, you know, you were creating design for design sake, to be beautiful, right? And you were just being an artist at that point. You weren't a designer. You know, it was, and I think that happens for a lot. It happened to me as a young designer, is I would create stuff that was cool. Like, really cool. You know, it was Photoshop.

Adrian Boysel [00:22:11]:
Yeah.

Paul Povolni [00:22:12]:
Textures. It had bevels, it had drop shadows. It, you know, it had all the cool stuff, and, like, it impressed other people that like cool stuff and. But totally missed the point. And I think. I think that's the difference between an amateur and a pro, and that's a difference from a cheap designer that will give you endless revisions and, you know, will give it to you for super cheap, and, you know, they'll turn it around really fast, is they're not applying any kind of strategy to the thinking behind the design. They'll just create something that allow you for its coolness and how good it looks but not be effective. It will miss the point.

Paul Povolni [00:22:55]:
Just like that mentor of yours, you know, said, yeah, what's the point? Like, this is cool looking. What's the point? And, you know, I think, I think young designers mess up on that, but I think, honestly, I think even agencies sometimes mess up on that. Like, I've seen agencies create stuff to impress other agencies and to get addies and to get awards and to, like, really impress other creatives with how cool and innovative and minimalist or whatever, you know, super cool design, but totally missing the point. And I think that's really important for people to realize that, you know, when, when it comes to design, you know, finding the person that does the coolest stuff is not always the best strategy. It's not always the best play, because it might look cool, but it's got to have a purpose. It's got to have, it's got to align with a lot of things. And so as you moved into marketing and planning and then even with branding, share with me the difference you see between design, branding and marketing.

Adrian Boysel [00:24:04]:
I think the bridge to that is the brand strategy, like you mentioned, and having the story as our differentiator, right. Because nobody else has our story. And that's what a lot of people are missing. They don't document their story, they don't share their story consistently. And that was kind of where the rubber met. The road for me is like, I read Donald Miller's story, brand book, I read ultimate sales machine and I saw the merger between the two and I saw an opportunity to kind of create that bridge. And it's really your purpose, right? When you build a brand around your purpose, what your archetype is, what's your story? What's your, why? Who's your niche? Who do you want to help most? What are their needs? Who do you not want to help? Who are the people that you're like, dude, stay away from me. This is what most businesses miss out on.

Adrian Boysel [00:24:46]:
It's just that one element in itself is like, who do I not want to help? I don't want to help the person that's like, I'm just looking for somebody cheap that's going to abuse me, that's going to look for the best deal and they're going to go on to the next person. I want to repel these kinds of people. Right? So incorporating that, so that's why I created the purpose driven branding blueprint and then that tailors and moves right into the purpose driven marketing plan. And the marketing plan is built off of Alan Dibs book, the one page marketing plan. But I've kind of expanded upon it. And so now the two really complement each other where it goes into your prospecting phase, your lead phase, and then your customer phase, and how you deliver that experience through all those phases. And so incorporating design into that makes it a lot easier when, you know, okay, hey, I'm the rebel archetype, right? I know I'm going to have darker colors. I also have the creator personality as a designer.

Adrian Boysel [00:25:34]:
So I'm going to do something that's more artistic, maybe a little more edgy, a little more creative than the average person. I'm probably going to use some neat AI images or something like that. And so being able to incorporate those elements through sight, sound, touch, smell and taste, right, all those five senses is something that I've gotten really good at just from doing it. I mean, I've done it over 5000 times now. So I think hopefully that answers the question of kind of merging the design world of content strategy, getting my certification through digitalmarketer.com and, you know, it's Mark Degrasse's amazing certification program that he does at digital marketer. I'm actually learning the content strategy process on top of my existing marketing strategy process. Cause like, oh, I first saw the content strategy course, I was like, oh, I don't need that. I've been doing content marketing and YouTube videos and social media marketing and I know all this stuff.

Adrian Boysel [00:26:23]:
And then all of a sudden I watch his training and I'm like, dude, I know nothing. That's the danger that we fall into as entrepreneurs, especially when we get into these, you know, 1520 years in, you think you know it all. You think you figured it all out, dude, when I watched that certification, I was like, I don't crap. Like, I thought I knew a lot, but this guy just dropped some serious knowledge bombs on me and gave me a framework for content strategy. Then I was able to really enhance even what I was doing even more on this.

Paul Povolni [00:26:49]:
What was the biggest revelation in that?

Adrian Boysel [00:26:53]:
I think understanding the content series, the content pillars, and then the, then the supporting pieces and how he lays it out in that framework and how, like, if you look at Russell Brunson's book, right, he got health, wealth and relationships, right? Those are the three categories of all businesses. And so graphic designers miss this. We're in the wealth building business. That is our job. We're here to make clients money. We're not just artists. That's here to make something beautiful for them that they can go show off to their friends. We're here to make something, make money, bring an ROI, return on investment.

Adrian Boysel [00:27:24]:
And that was kind of the big shift that I had, was like, okay, this is a money making thing. And then within the wealth building, right, it's who am I helping? So for me, it's social impact. So my, my category is helping social impact entrepreneurs and business owners, right? So there's my content series. Now, within that, I can have all kinds of categories. I can have my pillars, nonprofits for profits, you know, the different types of, you know, they're helping at risk youth versus helping domestic violence versus helping homeless. Right. Or diabetes. Right.

Adrian Boysel [00:27:53]:
Whatever the, the cause is, I can have all these pillars. And then there's supporting pieces that tie up and they all connect back to social impact marketing, which is why the love gangster was born.

Paul Povolni [00:28:02]:
Yeah. And so, you know, when, you know, you mentioned both the strategy and the archetypes and all of that. And that, that alone is a podcast. That's a course. I mean, you can go really deep with that and finding somebody that understands that is super valuable. And so when it comes to brand strategy, what's the difference between that and having a marketing plan?

Adrian Boysel [00:28:26]:
The brand strategy is the first layer of your foundation that gives you the ability to create a message that is consistent, cohesive, and not just visually, but, you know, auditorily and all the different ways. Right? Like real estate agents bake cookies in houses, right? That's part of, part of building a brand. So that kind of builds the brand strategy, gives you your foundation of like, who I am, what I do, what I care about, what's my story, what's my differentiator? And then you take that and you use that as like, hey, this is the message that I'm going out here and saying that's in alignment with my story. And being able to take the two and have those two pieces kind of stacked as the foundation for your, for your marketing. If I'm going to go out there and like, what happened to me and I watched this happen probably 3000 times is I was like, okay, let me look at my competitors in town and see what they're doing. And you imitate and copy and clone, as Russell likes to say, all your competitors. And you find a piece that you like from this guy and you find a piece that you like from that guy and you try to put your personality on top of that in there. And that's what my approach used to be.

Adrian Boysel [00:29:27]:
Now I've kind of forgotten everybody else's. I don't really care about my competitors. I don't really spend any time looking at their stuff because it really doesn't matter. And I am firm in my foundation of, I know what my story is. Nobody's got a story that you guys heard. Like mine, it doesn't exist. Is created happened once in all, attorney. It'll never happen again.

Adrian Boysel [00:29:45]:
So that is a really unique differentiator that I can tell over and over and over again. Nobody has the niche that I'm going after in terms of the way that I'm, I'm helping speakers, authors, but not just speakers, authors and coaches and business owners and entrepreneurs, but social impact type of people, right? And so that gives me the unique approach and then being able to communicate that with the messaging strategy of the rebel, as in a creator. Like, hey, we are creating content, we're creating brands, we're creating websites, we're creating marketing campaigns and ad campaigns. Like we are a creator agency. And so that's really helped me kind of create those two foundational layers. And I've done that with every single client now that I work with. And I really, there's been very few. It's more of an exception.

Adrian Boysel [00:30:26]:
I really won't work with anybody anymore if they don't have those two layers below them built and that they're solid and that they're like, they know them inside out and backwards, because it's just going to make it too difficult. They're going to go out there and put out inconsistent messages and, like, if you're a premium brand and you're out there offering discounts, I see every freaking premium brand doing, or not everybody. I see a lot of premium brands doing this on Black Friday where all of a sudden they're like, this high end premium brand. And the next thing you know, they're like, half off of this for Black Friday or 70% off of this course, Black Friday. I'm like, you just ruined all of your credibility and your brand consistency by.

Paul Povolni [00:31:00]:
Doing it for a small business owner. I love what you said about you. You don't care about your competition. Does that work for everybody?

Adrian Boysel [00:31:08]:
I'd say so, yeah. Because you can't. I mean, you can look to your competition for inspiration, but there you have everything you have. And so that's 80% of business problems are personal problems, right? That's the truth of business. And it's probably more like 90% of business problems are personal problems. But if you look at most businesses and most people that are running those businesses, they're not clear about their own identity. They're not clear about their purpose. I can't tell you how many people that I've worked with like, hey, so what's your purpose? They're like, I don't know if my purpose is helping at risk youth and restoring broken families.

Adrian Boysel [00:31:46]:
I'm very clear about that. And so if you're not clear about your own identity, you're going to just start looking for other people to get validation and get ideas and get inspiration. Everything that you need to build the most amazing brand ever is already inside of you. You have to go in. It's not about going out. And that works in your personal life and your professional life.

Paul Povolni [00:32:04]:
And so for the landscaper or for the hairdresser or for the roofer or whatever, I think that's applicable for them. You know, looking at that, I think it's definitely wise to understand the brandscape is what I call it, is kind of looking at what else is out there, what are they doing? And I think part of that is, you know, for one thing, to make sure you differentiate it from them to, you know, you know, Zig, where they zag, what are they doing? Where they're messing up or they're not serving their customers well, where you can do better. So I think there's super high value in understanding your competition but not saying that you're going to replicate what they're doing, because as the things you've shared, the story's different, the background's different, their purpose is different, their passions are different, their motivations, their core values, all of that is different. And so you can't just take that template and put it over your own business and expect to have the same level of success you'll find yourself, like, doing. I'm doing every single thing that they're doing, and yet I'm failing. Well, it's because you are not them. And you have create, you are created to follow your own path and your own journey. And that's where finding somebody that is not just a designer, that is not just going to make it pretty, use cool fonts, make it like Apple, make it like, but it's somebody that's going to actually dive into the brand strategy and get a lot deeper with it and understand what that is.

Paul Povolni [00:33:36]:
And so once they've got that identity together and once they understand who they are and who they serve, what they solve and all of that, you know, what are some of the important things when it comes to not guessing with their marketing strategy? What are some of the steps that you've see yourself taken with clients that you see that businesses need to take to not be guessing at what they're doing, to actually have some sort of a plan?

Adrian Boysel [00:34:04]:
Yeah. I mean, when it comes to marketing, I ask every client now that I meet and every person pretty much that I meet in any kind of business sense, I say, hey, what? Do you have a marketing plan? And they're like, no. And it's crazy. 99 out of 100 companies, probably 998 out of 1000 companies and business owners I talked to don't have a marketing plan. Like you have a business plan, and then that's like a 50 50, right? And I'm like, wow, I can't believe there's so many. No wonder the rate of failure is so high, because you don't have a plan, you're planning to fail. Right. And so I ask them, do they have a plan? And if they don't, that is a really key area to start.

Adrian Boysel [00:34:38]:
So some of the things that I walk them through is like, where are your ideal dream clients congregating? And some of them don't even know who their dream clients are. So I got to go back to the branding aspect and clear that out first. But on the marketing side, once you know who they are, then you can go out and actually say, okay, this is where they're congregating, right? They're hanging out on Facebook, or they're on TikTok, or they're on Reddit, or they're on Google Search, or they're on YouTube, right? Understanding the places where they're congregating so that you can drive traffic to your assets from there. And then once you drive them to that asset, what's the offer? Right? I was listening to something yesterday. Who was that yesterday? It was really good video that I was listening to, and it was like, oh, it was Russell Brunson. And he's like, it's either the hook, the message, or the offer. It's only three problems in every business. The hook, the message of the offer.

Adrian Boysel [00:35:28]:
Hook, the message of the offer. And I'm like, that's such a great point, is there's always something lacking. And so a lot of people have terrible hooks right at the top of their page. They don't have a really a good story brand, right? The SB seven framework is how I kind of the implementation of my marketing plan blends into the SB seven framework. It's like, cool. You have your brand story, right? You know, you are the hero, right? Which is the client meets the mentor, which is you or the guide, right? They give them a plan, they call them to action, and that plan results in success or failure. That's the SB seven framework. So walking clients through that journey and helping them see that their clients need to.

Adrian Boysel [00:36:05]:
They need to take their clients on that same journey and laying out their story on their website like that. And then having that offer that most people think that they can just, like, run Facebook ads or run Google Ad campaign, and they're gonna. They're gonna spend $10,000 their first month, and they're gonna make $100,000, and it just doesn't look like that, especially nowadays, with the competition and the prices of ads. It takes a long time to acquire those customers. And the people that are gonna win are the ones that are willing to spend the most to acquire customers. So if you have a client that's worth $1,500 to you, and it costs you $1,500 to acquire that person upfront, that might be what you have to do, right? You may even have to spend $2,000, but you're going to need to create something in your services where you can actually add the value stack right in there where you can take that from 1500 to 3000 or 4500 or $5,000. And so that's what I help clients walk them through. On the marketing side, I was like, okay, this is your initial first time offer, right? It's the first time offer.

Adrian Boysel [00:37:04]:
But then what is your next ascension of that? Where are you taking them from there? What other services they can provide? What other services providers can you collaborate with and say, hey, I'm going to send them over this way and get a referral fee? Ways to look at how you can increase the recurring revenue, the lifetime value.

Paul Povolni [00:37:20]:
So what's the DNA of a good offer?

Adrian Boysel [00:37:25]:
That's a great question. So I would say, I mean, you follow the hermoses and the guy that wrote the book before Hermozy. I'm forgetting it's called irresistible offers. And mark something. And having an offer that is so good that you can't say no to, right, something that takes away the fear. Because what stops people from moving forward is the fear of loss, the fear of losing money, losing time, having some sort of drama or relationship, bad relationship, getting burnt, right, by somebody. And I did a video on this like six years ago on my YouTube channel. That's super embarrassing.

Adrian Boysel [00:37:59]:
People can go look it up, but there are three things that stop people. They don't like you, they don't like the product or they don't like the service. And so the product or service. And so once you understand that your irresistible offer needs to be something that gives them a little taste of what you're doing and leads them to their next problem, right? So a great example of that is I have an ebook that I just finished. It's called iconic, invisible to iconic, right? I'm giving that away for free, right? So they don't have to pay anything, not even shipping. I'm literally going to eat that cost eight to $10, whatever it's going to cost to ship it out. And so that's going to be an irresistible offer where they can learn all the strategies that I have just around branding that is going to create a new problem, which is like, okay, now how do I implement this into my marketing, which is going to lead them back to my program? And so that would be a great example of what I would consider an irresistible offer of giving something completely away for free just to get their email to start building that relationship with them. And so that's, that's what I would consider kind of the DNA of an irresistible offer is having something that is low ticket or affordable or irresistible that they can not have any risk that they're not going to if, even if they buy this, you know, they invest in this, putting a money back guarantee.

Adrian Boysel [00:39:18]:
You know, Alex talks about this a lot of having that, that money back guarantee or just any kind of guarantee on your product. Hey, if you don't like it, I watched a guy years ago on stage, if you buy a ticket to my conference for, I think it was $299 and you don't like it, I'll give you $5,000. At the end of the conference, you can come up to me and I'll give you $5,000. That's an irresistible offer.

Paul Povolni [00:39:38]:
Wow. That's, that's confidence in that he's going to develop, you know, give them so much value that there's no way they'll take him up on that offer, you know, but, but that's how, that's how confident he is in solving their problem. Or, you know, the reason, the whole reason they came to the conference. Now you had mentioned, you know, post offer, you know, post, you know, once, once they take that initial offer, the ascension. Talk about that for a little bit.

Adrian Boysel [00:40:04]:
Yeah. So the ascension would be like a great example for me. I have the ebook that people are downloading and buying or not buying, but I'm giving away for free. Then from there they're going to get offered to check out my video marketing workshop that I spent two days producing. It's over 16 hours worth of content and I'm going to offer that at a low ticket, probably $27. I could easily sell that for $9.97, but I'm going to offer that for $97 or $27, something like that. And so I'm going to offer that at a really low, irresistible rate. And then once they see all the AI tools, all the strategies, the content strategy, the branding and walking them through all that, the next problem is going to create.

Adrian Boysel [00:40:44]:
Well, I see how much work all of this is. I don't want to do this all myself. I just want to hire these guys to do it because they clearly know what they're talking about. So I'm going to hire video marketing vault to come in and produce probably a video week for me. And so now if they buy a video a week for me, I have an offer going on right now for the first ten people that sign up and I'm already at six. For the first ten people that come up, it's two grand a month for a video a week. That's $500 a video. And they get added into my coaching community, they get all these other perks and memberships and stuff like that that I'm giving them as part of that offer.

Adrian Boysel [00:41:16]:
So $2,000 a month for a year. Now all of a sudden that one client became a $24,000 client to me. Right. So that's, that's the ascension that I take clients to and I've done that on the agency side with my branding packages and website packages and ads packages. I have layouts for all of those things and everything.

Paul Povolni [00:41:34]:
Have you taken clients through that process? What does it look like for a client that is not you or doing, doing design or whatever? I know some designers that might be listening to this and some creatives and some branders, you know, obviously are getting some head smacks of how they can, you know, create their offers and grow their clientele. But what about for some of the people that you've helped, have you taken them through this process and what does that look like for them?

Adrian Boysel [00:42:01]:
Yeah, so the way I break it internally, the process that I take them through, although I have the marketing plan and on the plan, it's lead or prospect lead and customer. I have a four step process that I walk them through over four sessions. Branding, which is that first session that I do. Visibility. Right. Where are they seen? Where are they going to be seen? Where are they not seen where they want to be when they not want to be seen? Right. Visibility, promotion. And that's where we get into the offer.

Adrian Boysel [00:42:26]:
And I have a kind of a whole bunch of layers to the promotion. And what is their promotion? How are they promoting their business? What methods are they using? What are their lead magnets? Are they using a VSL or pre selling mechanism? Right. And then conversion, like once you convert that person over, how are you walking them through that ascension model? How do you deliver that world class experience? How do you get them to refer their friends? What story? This is a big thing because you think about story in the beginning for your brand, but what's the story that you're giving them to go tell? When I had California printing as an example, people would walk in, they'd sit down with me and I designed right in front of them. They'd have people that would call them on the phone. There were other business owners like, hey, what are you doing right now? Like, dude, I'm at this place at Citrus Heights. This guy's literally designing my business cards and my flyers and my whole brand for me. Like, right now, as I'm sitting there, like, dude, where are you? And, like, I'm over here at this place. Can you send me the address? I need his help, too.

Adrian Boysel [00:43:16]:
I'm a handyman. And next thing you know, one became three, became 30, became 300, became 3000. And so I helped clients do that. I had a client recently come to me that I walked through both of those processes, the branding and the marketing plan, and we came up with a name for him. He's a third generation, I think, pest control guy, either second generation or third generation. So family. Family is a huge part of it for him. He's also a believer, faith based guy.

Adrian Boysel [00:43:43]:
And so he came up with the name black sheep pest control, right? He brought the name up and I was like, dude, we're not going to talk anymore about any other names. That's the name. And so it's black sheep pest defense, I think, is we're going to go with or what he was licensed for, but taking that black sheep concept and saying, we're not going to pull the wool over your eyes. We're all about integrity, serving people, doing things the right way. This is a story. We're a multi generational family of pest control people, right? You may have known our other family members who are Antelope Hills pest control, and now we're starting off with our new brand new company. And so being able to say that we're not brand new in the industry, but we have all this experience we're bringing into this new brand that we're going to operate in the way that we want to. And here's our story.

Adrian Boysel [00:44:24]:
And being able to walk them through is like, hey, we're going to come out and do an initial inspection and we're going to educate you as part of this inspection. And most companies are like, cool, yeah, what do you want? Oh, I don't want toxic chemicals. Cool, we'll do that for you. But what they don't know is that those, those non toxic chemicals are only going to last three days. So they just spent $180 for their pest control thing for something that's going to last three days. So he's the kind of person that's going to go in there and educate them and say, I know everybody's telling you they'll just be a yes person and tell you this, what you should do, but I'm going to tell you right now the word pest control and the things that we do is we're killing things, right? That is the nature of our business. So non toxic doesn't really work for pest control if you really want it to be effective. So that's just a quick example of what I'm doing for that guy.

Adrian Boysel [00:45:09]:
And just walking him through kind of setting that foundation with his clients. And if he does, they're never going to go anywhere else because he's set the foundation. He's set the expectations for what they can know now going forward that most of his competitors are not taking into consideration.

Paul Povolni [00:45:23]:
Okay, so you mentioned the book that you had coming out regarding going from invisible to iconic. Tell me a little bit, a little bit about that. What, what makes somebody invisible? And what's the first step to becoming iconic?

Adrian Boysel [00:45:36]:
Well, the best way to become invisible is just do your competitors and competition is doing right. That's the way you become invisible. Just copy your company's. Our competition's terrible content because they copied it off of somebody else. You're just getting more of the watered down stuff that sounds like here at blah, blah, blah, we value integrity and customer service. Like did if I hear another person say that. Right, so that's the way you're invisible is not being you, not being authentic and not standing out with the story, the values, and even, and probably most importantly, the voids that you had in your whole life. Right.

Adrian Boysel [00:46:10]:
My purpose on earth is to help at risk youth and restore broken families. Because I came from somebody who was at risk youth and had a broken family. Right. So who is more qualified to do that as their mission and their purpose in their life? Right. That's going to come with opposition, of course. And I've had plenty of opposition in my adult years of learning how to restore my own broken family. I had to go through that with my first marriage and learn what that actually is like. And then my second marriage, it almost happened again until I got my head on strain and was like, okay, this is on me to take care of.

Adrian Boysel [00:46:39]:
This is on me to fix. I got to do the deep work within myself to figure out how to do this. And so to become iconic, you have to become consistent is, first of all, you have to be able to be positioned as the authority and as the thought leader in your space. And you can't do that without content marketing, whether that's blog articles, videos, podcasts, like this. Like, this is the way Vulpa has become iconic. I can just speak from my own experience of knowing you for, man, it's probably been five or six years we've been connected on Facebook. You have done so many epic superhero mock ups of you as a superhero. It's unforgettable.

Adrian Boysel [00:47:15]:
It's become iconic for that. Every time I think of you, I think of you in a Superman costume or whatever it costs. Like, all the different mock ups you've done, and you've done such a great job with that and you've been so consistent with that over the years. I haven't seen it as much lately, but that was like your go to.

Paul Povolni [00:47:30]:
Thing, always some sort of head on top of superhero bodies.

Adrian Boysel [00:47:36]:
So that to me, as a branding guy, was like, dude, this guy's brilliant. This is such good marketing. And it was something that didn't have anything to do with business. It didn't need to be a business thing. And so that's what most people miss, is they try to make everything formal and everything professional and everything corporate and try to make themselves look bigger than they are. Just be authentic, be real, be transparent. Be yourself, be freaking broken, be wounded, be vulgar if you have to. Be like, do whatever is going to be most natural to you and that's what's going to help you stand up, but be consistent.

Paul Povolni [00:48:06]:
So where do people deceive themselves into thinking that they're not invisible, but they actually are? Like, what are some self deceptions and some mindsets that people kind of are in and they don't realize how invisible they are?

Adrian Boysel [00:48:22]:
I think one of the things that people do most often I hear, especially my clients, is they say, well, I don't really need any marketing. My best marketing is my word of mouth. I just get referrals. My business runs on referrals. I'm like, and what happens when those stop? What are you going to do now? Most people are not diversified enough, so they put all their eggs into one basket. Like, I'm just the Facebook guy, okay? A great example of that is my beautiful, amazing, talented boss wife who has a business called Crunchy Cottage. I helped her come up with that name. She was going to call it twin cottages.

Adrian Boysel [00:48:53]:
I'm like, we're not doing that. We're calling it crunchy cottages are going after crunchy moms and the granola movement. And so we're calling it crunchy cottage. She built her entire business, initially for the first two years during the pandemic. But on Facebook, tens of thousands of people following her. Millions of people reached on Facebook. And then one day, Facebook decided, and she wasn't doing email, she wasn't doing ads. Facebook decided that they were going to take her visibility and her reach, and they were going to drop it by 70%.

Adrian Boysel [00:49:20]:
And her months went from $30,000 months to $7,000 months. And she was like, oh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And I'm like, this is why we have to diversify. And so now she's been building her email list. She's been doing those other things. She opened up a store, an actual co op store where she's got our products in a store. And so she's been able to supplement with those things. She's diversified now, but putting all of your eggs in, just Facebook, just Instagram, just TikTok, just LinkedIn, just email is a very bad recipe for disaster. And you'll notice her.

Adrian Boysel [00:49:56]:
I left out intentionally, YouTube. I would say I would follow the same advice and not go only on YouTube. But to be honest, YouTube is such a powerful and untapped beast of a marketing channel for businesses, and 99 out of 100 businesses are not using it. It's silly. It's seriously silly that they're not on there. Even if you don't like creating videos and being on camera doing faceless videos, you have to do something with YouTube. Because the quality of the leads and the quality of the people that come from YouTube, people who are watching YouTube, who take action, who like what you have to say, who resonate with your message, your story, and your content, they'll be the best clients. You will never find.

Adrian Boysel [00:50:36]:
Not even word of mouth. Like, the clients that come to me, word of mouth are like, okay, well, tell me about it. What about this? And. And they still are like, want to have some. Some back and forth negotiations and objections on YouTube? They come to me and they're like, cool, what do I sign up? I want to hire you. And I'm like, what? Really? It just happened to me. I paid me $2,500 to teach a journey, and I'm like, dude, this is the easiest money I ever made in my whole life. Going in on YouTube.

Paul Povolni [00:51:01]:
Yeah, that's awesome. And I think it definitely is something to consider, especially since it's the second largest search engine. I mean, it's, you know, people are just all over YouTube for anything they need to learn, anything they need to study, anything they're curious about, anything they want to be entertained by. YouTube is a place to go to find that stuff. And so definitely consider that in your strategy and what you're doing as well. So you mentioned early on, pretty early on in our discussion, the love gangster. Tell me about what in the world is a love gangster.

Adrian Boysel [00:51:39]:
So a love gangster is somebody that goes out there and kills people with kindness. Somebody that actually goes out there and does random acts of kindness. Somebody cuts them off instead of flipping them off or yelling or I pulling their car over and getting in to fight someone that blows them a kiss or that gives them a heart or they're freaking, sends some positive vibes that are out there that way, right, with their hand, or, you know, says, I'm sorry, right? And says, hey, my bad, right? And that does the opposite of what most people are doing is acting like children. Most adults are pretending to be adults. They're acting like children. So going out there and giving more love and, like, to the world, donating clothes, giving that money to the guy that's standing on the, on the street that looks 28 years old who should have a job, that's holding a cardboard sign that says, anything helps, and giving him money anyway, because who's going to become poor by giving, it doesn't happen, right? So just becoming that, that giver, becoming that, that servant person that goes out and serves people versus, you know, taking things from people. Bob Berg's go giver is a really great influence and inspiration for me. And so that's the concept of how it came to be.

Adrian Boysel [00:52:44]:
Adley, some people will probably know who she is. She's huge. One of the top content creators in the world. I met her about a month and a half ago, a month ago. And she was telling me, you know, all I do is take chickens and put them in the bathtub or take tampons and put them in the refrigerator. I just take two things that don't belong together and I combine them and I'm like, huh? So I come home from that after taking her to lunch and hanging out with her. And I sit, I'm sitting there listening to the Steve Miller band song Joker, and he's like, some people call me the space Cowboy. Some people call me the gangster of love.

Adrian Boysel [00:53:13]:
And as soon as that word, those words came out of his mouth, I was like, dude, that's me. And I'm like, I've been obsessed with mafia movies. I believe that if there are past lives, I was a mafia boss in my last life, and I used fear in my last life, and I knew. I've been down the road of fear and making people fear me and fighting and doing all that. I've been down that dark road, and now I use light and love and Jesus and faith and joy and all the fruits of the spirit to lift people up, lift communities up, lift entrepreneurs up, and that is the concept of love gangster. So I'm trying to create more love gangsters in the world. They're going to go out, build a movement of killing people with ties.

Paul Povolni [00:53:52]:
So the origin of taking that step of launching Love gangster, I know you got the name for it from the song. Like, what were some of the other triggers that got you to actually, you know, move? You know, you're a brander, you're a designer, you're a marketer. You know, you help people with, with videos. What, what transitioned you into pursuing that new direction in, as an offshoot of what you already do?

Adrian Boysel [00:54:23]:
Well, so I've always looked up to Mister Rogers. I looked up to, you know, a lot of the people who were on children's television, PBS, you know, reading Rainbow and Lamar Burton and all that. And I looked up to those people who were educating and helping kids and helping youth, and that was in line with me. I even bought the red cardigan. I have Mister Rogers socks, and I was going to do a thing called the Mister Rogers of marketing. That was my idea. And just something about it. I'm a nerd.

Adrian Boysel [00:54:49]:
Like, don't get me wrong, I'm a nerd, but I got the rebel in me, right? I'm tattooed, I'm a little more edgy. I skateboard and dirt bike and rock concerts and metal shows and all that stuff. And, you know, I'm not the clean, polished, you know, christian guy that most people see as Mister Rogers. So I needed to find something that was more me, that was more authentic. And then when that. And it was all in God's timing. When that name came up, I was like, there's the mafia boss, the gangster, like, don't mess with my family kind of concept and my whole upbringing, there's kind of the bad side, right? The conspiracy theories, the gambling, the brass knuckles. Like, there's the, the dark side, but then there's the light side and the love side of me, which is what people remember me and know me as.

Adrian Boysel [00:55:33]:
It's like, you just have the biggest heart. That's what people say. Like, I don't know if I could ever love people the way that you love people. And so I have that side to my personality, and that's what I want to grow. That's what I want to nurture. That's feeding the two bulls, right? And so I want to. I want to dive deeper into that and become more of that in my life. And so having the inspiration of Mister Rogers, the love, the kindness, and the joy and pouring into the kids, that's what I needed.

Adrian Boysel [00:55:55]:
I needed that archetype and that avatar that was authentic to me. And it was love gangster. And soon as, like, it was when I heard what my purpose was in the world, I freaking, you know, my friend told me, oh, it sounds like your purpose is to help out, rescue and restore broken families. I just started bawling. It was the same kind of moment for me when I heard love the gangster of love and love gangster. And my wife was like, dude, that's you right there. Like, that's so you. And I'm like, oh, my gosh.

Adrian Boysel [00:56:19]:
So that kind of just helped close the loop on. On social impact, entrepreneurship, and what is my character, what is my Persona as the love, as the rebel?

Paul Povolni [00:56:30]:
And so you felt like it was a. Something was missing. A part of your identity was still kind of out there that needed to finish the puzzle. And love gangster became that. That's amazing, man. Congratulations on that. And so if people want to, you know, learn more about you, you know, you mentioned the book that you have coming out. What's the best way to get ahold of you? Get ahold of the book.

Adrian Boysel [00:56:56]:
Check me out on YouTube. YouTube. Adrian Boycel, Adr I A N B O Y S, as in Sam E l. And I'm on there on YouTube. You can find me on LinkedIn as well and on Facebook. My website is adrianboysel.com dot. And we're working on something pretty big. I'll probably create something just for your listeners.

Adrian Boysel [00:57:13]:
We'll do like forward slash head smack, but brandbutler.AI/headsmack. When that's ready, I'll make that page specifically for your people. It's a brand tool that I'll be able to give away for free just to your people.

Paul Povolni [00:57:25]:
Thank you so much, Adrian. This has been amazing. I've really enjoyed this. Glad we connected and glad you liked my superheroes with my big fat head on them, and it got your attention. But this has been a great conversation. Really appreciate you coming on and sharing your journey and sharing your head smack moments and the stuff that's happened in your life and quite an inspiration. Proud of you, man. And keep going and look forward to hearing of all the great things that happen through the love gangster.

Paul Povolni [00:57:55]:
Have a good one, man. Take care.

Adrian Boysel [00:57:56]:
Thanks. God bless. Bye.