IAM1217 – Founder Helps Executives Manage and Optimize their Presence Online

Bant is a noted marketing and media executive, entrepreneur, and academic. In 2010 he was inducted into the AAF Advertising Hall of Achievement. He is the Founder and Chairman of Qnary an award-winning, global, professional reputation management and talent branding solutions company. In March 2020, Bant received his Ph.D. and lectures on marketing, executive reputation, and artificial intelligence’s impact on media at Blanquerna – Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona, Spain.

• CEO Story: Bant’s driving force for almost 10 years was to create Qnary after having been into different agencies.
• Business Service: Qnary is focused on working with executives to manage and grow their online presence built with a technology platform that optimizes their profile, findability, and topics they wanna be associated with, which generates content for them.
• Secret Sauce: They developed a solution that allows them to generate a lot of content, and manage a lot of optimization and growth through automation, at a compelling price position. Their goal is to make the customer have as an easy experience as possible. Build a solution that is easy and effective.
• CEO Hack: I put myself into a state of war room after the pandemic, thinking outside of the box on how to grow the business through a 15min. call meeting daily with the leadership team.
• CEO Nugget: Embracing the process of continuous learning and, most importantly building a system.
• CEO Defined: Someone stewarding in the direction of the company. Similarly, stewarding the vessel and understanding your limitations.

Website: www.qnary.com

www.bantbreen.com

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:45 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the Imceo podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today, avant Breen of Canary Bant. It's great to have you on the show.

00:53 – Dr. Bant Breen

It's great to be here. Gresh, thanks so much for having us.

00:56 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on and hear about all the awesome things that you and your team are working on. Before we jump into that, I wanted to read a little bit more about the band so you can hear about some of those awesome things. The band is a noted marketing and media executive, entrepreneur, and academic. In 2010, he was inducted into the AAF Advertising Hall of Achievement and he is the founder and chairman of Canary, an award-winning global professional reputation management and talent branding solutions company.

In March 2020, Bent received his PhD and lectures on marketing, executive reputation, and artificial intelligence impact on media at Blank Kiernan in University Dad. Ramon Yule in Barcelona, Spain. I'm not sure how much I nailed that or how much I missed it, but hopefully, I got some.

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01:36 – Dr. Bant Breen

It was excellent.

01:39 – Gresham Harkless

Magnificent. I deserve it.

01:42 – Dr. Bant Breen

I feel like you're from Barcelona. Yes.

01:45 – Gresham Harkless

There we go. I might be from there. I might have just gone there a couple of times and had some really good food. So either way, we're pretty close. That's all that matters, right, Ben?

01:53 – Dr. Bant Breen

Absolutely. Absolutely.

01:54 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

01:57 – Dr. Bant Breen

Yeah, I'm excited to chat. Let's go for it.

02:00 – Gresham Harkless

Let's make it happen. To kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started. I like to call it your CEO story.

02:08- Dr. Bant Breen

Oh, sure. Well, most of my background is actually in the marketing world. After I finished graduate school, I took a job with a marketing holding group called WPP. It was called the WPP Fellowship and it was a special program that exposed me to a variety of marketing disciplines at a relatively young age, whether it be identity consulting and media advertising, or events, and it kind of gave me a great foundation to think about communications from a very holistic perspective. It was also at a time when things that are very commonplace today were just emerging.

So my career started at the birth of the Internet age. And so I was a young, ambitious person, and I was the person that everyone a little older than me turned to, to ask questions about the Internet. What is this Internet thing? And suddenly I found myself kind of leading digital marketing at places. Over my career, I worked at other groups, and other advertising and marketing groups on a lot of branding efforts. Early on, it was things like building branded websites and even things as mundane as a concept that you may not even know of. Gresh, there used to be a thing called a screensaver for computers, so you.

03:42 – Gresham Harkless

Don't burn the screen, right?

03:43 – Dr. Bant Breen

Exactly. But that developed over time. I went on to build some agencies on my own and then joined groups where I essentially was in charge of their digital marketing efforts, most recently the IPG family of agencies. And then I got the, I guess, the entrepreneurial bug when I had what I thought was a big idea. And that is canary. And that's been the driving force of my life for the last almost ten years.

04:14 – Gresham Harkless

Jeff, nice. I appreciate hearing about your journey. I think so many times as I rattled off all the accolades and success that you have, you sometimes forget about that journey. You see somebody that success and you're just like, okay, well, they woke up and they did that, but there's a lot of story and expertise and experience that you had along the way. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it kind of sounds like those range of experiences may have led you to be able to kind of do all the awesome things you're doing with Canary, you got to think.

04:39- Dr. Bant Breen

About a lot of different factors. I'm trying to remember it's one of these books that came out in the last decade. I think it's a Malcolm Gladwell book where he talks about the rise of someone like Bill Gates and the facts.

04:55 – Gresham Harkless

That he grew up.

04:56 – Dr. Bant Breen

Yeah, the fact that he grew up within five minutes of the University of Washington's computer center and was able to use it. And certainly, the fact that my career began at the point where the Internet was just emerging has been a huge factor in my life. We are. I am the generation that is that transitional generation from the pre-Internet era to the post. And that led to us and all of the people that I'd say are part of that digital media revolution, building what we now know today as digital advertising, and it's been a crazy process.

I think we probably, my generation have an interesting perspective on all the battles we had with the big bosses that were running things pre-digital, on all the barriers that were put up over the years. But certainly, as we've seen over the last, I'd say, 30 years, the digital revolution has happened. And it seems like just one tiny step now in a much broader digital shift.

06:12 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it feels like it's here to stay, but as you said, the innovations and technology have happened at such a rapid pace, it kind of makes you feel like we're just kind of scratching the surface of what we might look at in five years, or even sometimes it feels like a year and say, this was absolutely, absolutely nothing. So I know one of those innovations and things that, you know, you've been working on is canary. So I wanted to dread out a little bit more. Could you take us through a little bit more on what you're doing, and how you're serving the clients that you work with?

06:36- Dr. Bant Breen

Yeah. So Canary is a company that focuses on working with executives to manage and grow their online presence. Really what they look like, what they're saying, and who they're connecting with in the social media space and search. And so we've built a technology platform that supports that effort. It supports the effort in optimizing their profiles for findability and strength of connection and the topics they want to be associated with.

It generates thought leadership content for them, whether that be short-form content in the form of things like LinkedIn posts and tweets, to longer-form content like articles, and now quite a bit of video. So we do a lot of video work with our system now and then it links that with the key thought leaders in the over 100 different business verticals that matter to become a thought leader in that space. And we grow their audience and influence over time as well.

So it's an all-encompassing solution. I'd say the genesis of the idea came from a realization that there was a wealth of tools that were being made available to brands and enterprises to kind of optimize and grow what they were doing. But there was little out there that supported executives and individuals. And so I set out to build something that had to be catered to that audience. And, you know, after ten years, we're growing. It's been ten years seems like a long time, but it feels like it was like a blink of an eye so very fast.

08:16 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. When you're moving and grooving, like really, really fast, and you get to see, like, the baby as you use that metaphor and start to take the first steps and start to run and to sprint and do all those things. It sounds like it's pretty awesome to kind of see, uh, you, you march out and grow. And so you might have already touched on this, but I want to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself the business, or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique as a product?

08:42 – Dr. Bant Breen

I would say, you know, the, the key things that we've done is we've, we've developed a solution that allows us to generate a lot of content, manage a lot of optimization and growth at a compelling kind of price position. Our goal is to make the customer have as easy of an experience in this process as possible. The key thing for us has been to build a solution that is simple and effective. Right. Simple and effective. So some of the companies that touch on our space offer elements, but don't deliver that full, full capability.

09:24- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:36 – Dr. Bant Breen

Wow. There have been so many different moments as a CEO. And so let me kind of probably talk about the thing that has put us onto an incredible growth spurt over the last several years. So, Covid was a fascinating moment. I think we, like everybody, thought we were going to be dead in the water last March when we all kind of were scratching our heads on the meaning of life. You know, I clearly remember lying in my living room staring at the ceiling, like, what the hell is going on in the world?

10:14- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I think I was there, too.

10:16- Dr. Bant Breen

Yeah. Yeah. But by April of last year, things started to turn around. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that we went into a kind of a bit of a, like a war room mode, if that makes any sense, where, you know, we were having calls every morning, early lunch calls, and evening calls with the leadership team. And it just, everyone was very, very focused, and it forced us to be truly out of the box in terms of thinking of how we grow the business, how we manage our existing relationships.

And so it's interesting. Now, that war room phase lasted for about, I dont know, maybe as much as six months. But coming out of that, there have been a couple of things that really changed for us, and I'm going to mention a couple. So one of them is that we do literally a 15-minute call every morning with the leaders of the company and it's just a very quick boom, boom, boom, boom, boom check-in. And that has been critical in a world where we're all kind of not in the same office anymore. Two is that we have built something which is what we call a U-led enterprise which is we don't dictate to any employee where they are based.

We've designed a model where an individual can give them an office. We've done a global deal with a shared working company to give them an office wherever they are if they so choose. They can work at home if they want as well. But we don't evaluate you by looking over your shoulder. I praise the team that we have at Canary where I, we all just looked at it, we accepted the situation. It's really important to accept it, accept where you are, accept what's exactly happening on the table, look at that data, and just say, look, this is the real data. Don't waste time on what you want it to be. Accept it and then reshape it and go from there.

12:22 – Gresham Harkless

I didn't know and I was going to actually ask you for a CEO nugget and this might actually be it. Is it that ability that I guess advice you would give yourself or even somebody you might be mentoring? Would it be to really understand that? I guess perfection is something that isn't really real. It's a fallacy, it doesn't exist. But it's the idea that those people who become successful are constantly iterating, getting better, improving, not going without mistakes, but continuing to get to where they want.

12:47- Dr. Bant Breen

To be, I think so. I think it's embracing that process of continuous learning and building a system around that. So when I see younger folks, or I don't want to say younger, I would say anybody who wants to be an entrepreneur sometimes actually I would say the older folks struggle with this even more is don't get locked in on your logo or your brand messaging or one thing or that. Keep moving, move, move. Make sure that you get it going as a minimum viable product.

Get clients, see what they say, learn from what they've said. Keep going, go, go, go. Um, it's a real, real problem when people lock in too long and just can't, can't shift or still are like focused on their logo and like, ah, you know, we have to get the logo right. Are you kidding me? I mean, I mean, I'm, if I ran an identity consultancy or branding agency, maybe I'd be happy about that. But it's. It's. That's just a waste of. It's a huge waste of money and time.

13:52 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I say so often that I feel like I've heard, you know, continuously that we get so much, you know, we get so stuck in on the how instead of the why. Like, if you have a mission, you know, making sure you understand, like, what you're doing to try to make that impact rather than how. If you say, okay, well, the logo needs to have three stripes instead of two, you're focused more on the how rather than this is the mission.

And we have to be able to pivot, we have to enter it, we have to change so that we can get to ultimately serving that mission. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition, of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEO's on the show. So bent. What does being a CEO mean?

14:27- Dr. Bant Breen

Yeah, it's been an interesting one. When I first became a CEO, I naively thought perhaps that I was. I was dictating the direction of a business. Right. But what you quickly learn that a CEO really is, is you're someone who is stewarding. Stewarding the vision of a company. And it's a collective. It's a collective vision, and you're stewarding the direction of that business and making sure that. That you're heading in the right direction. A good CEO, what makes a strong CEO is someone who understands the limitations of that role. Right. Which is that you might have a big title in a way, but you're just. You're on a vessel, you're stewarding a vessel, and you need to just be aware of that.

15:21 – Gresham Harkless

I think that hit the nail on the head. I love that. Especially that analogy about stewarding the ship and understanding each of the different aspects of that ship and the limitations of the role. Appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all those awesome things you guarantee we're working on.

15:42- Dr. Bant Breen

Yeah, sure. Well, listen, gresh, thank you so much for being on the program. You can reach me@bantitcanary.com or you can find me on LinkedIn.

15:52- Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I truly appreciate you, band, to make it even easier. We'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too. But I appreciate you for giving me so much knowledge and information. Of course, sharing that with us today, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:03- Dr. Bant Breen

You too, gresh. Thanks so much.

16:07 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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