How Story-Driven Brands Make Competition Irrelevant
With Guest Gair Maxwell
Turn your company into an industry legend through the power of brand storytelling.
The How to Sell More Podcast
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January 15, 2025
What makes a brand legendary? Can a small or medium-sized company build a legendary brand? Is that even something business owners and marketers should strive for? After all, a “brand” doesn’t help you sell more…or does it?
In this episode of “How to Sell More,” Mark Drager interviews Gair Maxwell to reveal how ordinary businesses can become extraordinary brands through the power of storytelling.
Gair is the author of Big Little Legends: How Everyday Leaders Build Irresistible Brands. From turning a small-town car dealership into a $50 million phenomenon to helping a home renovation company scale to $1 billion in revenue, he shares the secrets behind creating magnetic brands, the kind of brands that make selling a whole lot easier.
In this talk, you’ll learn how changing your story, not your product, can amplify your brand’s visibility and transform your entire business. Gair shares why most companies get branding wrong and the strategies you need to stand out from your competition, even in a commoditized market.
“Art without a story is just paint on a canvas. A business without a story is just like every other business.” - Gair Maxwell
What’s the real secret? Effective storytelling isn’t a marketing scheme. It’s not a tactic. It’s not something you test out. Brand storytelling becomes embedded into every aspect of your company, from its culture to day-to-day operations. Slowly, over time, more and more customers will find you because they resonate with your people, your values, and your unique brand identity.
Gair also shares some hard truths: leading a legendary brand requires courage and an open mind. Traditional marketing tactics lead to subpar results, so you must be willing to challenge the status quo and try a new approach that prioritizes storytelling.
Influenced by his work with some of the world’s leading organizations, including Apple Specialist Marketing Group, Caterpillar, NAPA, and Virginia Tech, Gair teaches everyday business owners how to build brands customers seek out. His method transforms your brand into a must-have that attracts customers who care more about value than cost.
Gair is a highly sought-after international public speaker who has shared stages with icons like Richard Branson and Gene Simmons. Before that, he had an award-winning career as a broadcaster in Canada.
If you’re looking for breakthrough growth, Gair Maxwell will help you start telling stories that you can only tell to market in a whole new way. So you can stand out. So you can sell more.
Connect with Gair Maxwell
More About Today's Guest, Gair Maxwell
Gair Maxwell is a storyteller, brand strategist and self-described history junkie who marvels at the sight and sound of a well-struck drive off the tee.
A frequent-flying keynote speaker, he has shared speaking stages with icons such as Richard Branson and Gene Simmons, and was named Speaker of the Year by TEC Canada, the country's largest CEO organization.
Gair is an accredited Tennessee Squire, preferring Jack Daniel's on the rocks and a cold Moosehead. A life-long fan of Van Halen, he believes both versions of the band-the one with David Lee Roth and the one with Sammy Hagar-should be considered legendary.
Gair currently resides in London, Ontario, with his business and life partner, Dana Zilic, and their brood of two cocker spaniels (Theodore & Sophie) and a beagle-mix rescue named Maggie.
Big Little Legends is his second book.
A Transcription of The Talk
Mark Drager: Gair, I'd like to start with the title of your book, 'Big Little Legends.' It immediately caught my attention because it speaks to something I think many business leaders struggle with - this tension between being a smaller company and wanting to make a big impact in your market. What inspired you to frame it this way?
Gair Maxwell: Well, that's a great story. The actual seed of the idea was planted in 2002 with a small mom-and-pop business, if you want to know the origin. And I'm a history aficionado.
Mark Drager: Anyone who's picked up the book knows that you're a big fan of history and storytelling.
Gair Maxwell: Big fan of history. That being said, small business. I want you to picture this, Mark: small business, mom-and-pop, five or six people working there. They're doing just over a million a year in revenue, Mark. They have an interchangeable product; in other words, there's nothing different about their product versus all the other competitors, and they are in a highly competitive market.
But let's add another degree of difficulty. They are in the worst business in the world for public perception and reputation. In terms of how the public sees this business and this industry, they would rank below politicians and lawyers. That's where all this came from. And so, it begs the question, what happened?
I met Jim Gilbert in 2002—it was September. It was at a Chamber of Commerce function. I was speaking at the Fredericton, New Brunswick Chamber of Commerce. Jim comes up afterwards; we start chit-chatting a little bit about how to grow a small business. And then, voilà. At the time, I was doing soft skills training—it was kind of like a Dale Carnegie type thing—and Jim and I started working together. Sure enough, we improved the sales team a little bit, and we did some things here and there, but it was four years, Mark—four years—until we hit the jackpot.
We didn't change pricing, promotion, or anything around the product. We didn't change any of that. But we did change one thing significantly, and we changed the story. I want that to sink in. We changed the story. That business became a $50 million business employing 38 people.
It is the undisputed, unrivaled category of one in its entire competitive space. And that's where Big Little Legends originated. Over time, what I've done is reverse-engineered the whole thing to figure out how you can duplicate the process in any industry, any company—B2B, B2C, nonprofit, municipalities—wouldn't matter what it is.
Without knowing it at the time, Mark, we were really focusing on creating the legend. But there was no playbook. There was no script. And that's essentially what happened. And Jim Gilbert became—are you ready for it?—Canada's huggable car dealer.
Mark Drager: I was waiting. You were burying the lead there a bit. I was waiting because I know, on behalf of the audience, they're going, “What is this commoditized industry? What is this? Mom-and-pop, five-person goes to 30, what goes from a million to multiples?”
Gair Maxwell: Yeah, what goes from a million to 50 million? That's unheard of in a way, isn't it? It really is. But never lose sight of the fact he's selling used cars. What's the instant audience response? What do people instantly feel when they hear those two words—used cars?
And the fact is, Jim, Mark, doesn't fit the stereotype at all. From the day we met, he never fit the stereotype. And this will really help. I always love these types of opportunities and these types of podcasts, because you get to really explain it in a way you can't in the written word.
Jim is a low talker. Jim is very soft-spoken. All right, he just doesn't talk very loud. He's a very quiet, humble, aw-shucks kind of guy. Now, his wife, Donna... I want you to picture this, Mark. Donna, you know couples, right? They’re in the business together.
Mark Drager: So she's a firecracker, isn't she?
Gair Maxwell: No, she's even lower. No, Mark, I'm not kidding, Donna's really... see what I mean? You've got two people who don't even come close to the stereotype.
Mark Drager: So why did you focus on story, though?
Gair Maxwell: Here's what happened, and you've got to remember, in 2006 there's no grand strategy, there's no big plan. But we did trust instinct and intuition, and we took to the airwaves. We used radio back then, because at that time, radio was a very viable vehicle.
Mark Drager: I will point out, though, that radio still is very effective in drive time for certain types of businesses in certain markets. It's still extremely effective.
Gair Maxwell: And so that's why I'm making the point, and I'm glad you supported it, but especially in that particular market. Now it's fallen off, but at the time, it really worked. We would go on the air, and I read the commercials. Okay, he's been called the Casanova of customer focus, the Romeo of Roadsters. By golly, he's the McDreamy of drive. Stop by Jim Gilbert's and get your daily dose of hug tonic designed to improve your love affair with your car and your libido. Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals, Canada's Huggable Car Dealer.
Mark, we ran these vignettes for years. What are we not talking about?
Mark Drager: Yeah, you're not talking about discounts or deals. You know, I grew up in the Toronto area, and we would always get Lackawanna, Buffalo, Rochester, New York-style car ads. They'd always be like, if I can go from memory here, "We've got new cars, we've got old cars, we've got all the cars you need! Hi, Mom!" They were always holding signs that said, "Hi, Mom."
Gair Maxwell: As a category, then you get it, Mark. Everyone is trying to out-shout and out-scream everyone else in every market across the country. I travel North America extensively, and it's always the same: better quality, better selection, better service, better value, better prices. Everything's just better at North Star Ford or whatever it is—0.9% financing, all makes and models, no credit, no problem.
Mark Drager: So I didn't mention this in the introduction, but I think people picked up on the point that you have a broadcast career, you have a broadcast background, right?
Gair Maxwell: Sure, I did 20 years of it, and so I was very familiar with that industry. The magic—and that's what it was—of Canada's Huggable Car Dealer extended to the story we told. We went on the air and talked about a story. We told stories, did episodes on Seinfeld, played off different pop culture things, and that cut through the noise.
Strategically, we were speaking, and continue to speak, a very different language. We're not using the same category language as everybody else. Everything from the Huggable Car Dealer was rooted in the power of a great story. We had no idea, Mark, how far this would go, how much it would blow up.
To the point where—and I think our listeners and viewers will be interested in knowing—he got into the powersports game several years ago, just before the pandemic. How does a guy out of Fredericton become the number one Kawasaki dealer in all of Canada? There are 160 Kawasaki dealers in the national network. How does this guy show up from nowhere, in a small market like Fredericton, and become number one in the country?
We knew theoretically that as we were telling the huggable story and as it kept building and building, we were building what we call “reputational equity.” We knew Huggable stood for something in that market, and as soon as he had something else to sell, like motorcycles and ATVs, guess what? The market came to him.
Mark Drager: So I hope you don't take any offence to this, but when you did the radio read, my first reaction was, that's a little cheesy. It feels a little cheesy, and this is where I want to go with it.
I have found in my career that too often people are a little too cool for school. They want to stand out, but they don't want to go too far. They want to be different, but they don't want to put themselves out there. They want to be personal and human, but they want to come across as not trying too hard.
What I've learned is that there tend to be two different mindsets in business: there are people who care more about results than how they look getting there, and there are people who care more about how they look than whether they actually get results. As you went to market with this—the seed that led to the book—how comfortable or uncomfortable were you with leaning into the cheesiness? Effective is effective is effective, but how did you guys deal with that?
Gair Maxwell: Yeah, there's a great story that illustrates this, Mark. I remember it like it was yesterday.
We are six weeks into these radio ads, just six weeks in. We don't really know anything, right? I want everyone to understand that we don't really know what's happening yet.
But six weeks in, Jim knows something is happening. Complete strangers are asking him for a hug—strangers. We're talking coffee shops, grocery store aisles, hockey games, at the Regent Mall in Fredericton.
So six weeks in, Jim and Donna and I are having dinner, and I can recreate this because I remember it so vividly. Jim's looking across the table at me and saying in his quiet voice, "I've been advertising for 20 years. I've never had anyone come up to me and talk to me about my ad."
Again, we didn't know it then, but these were the early signals. Those seeds planted in rich soil were starting to sprout. This is where Donna deserves all the credit in the world, because she came up with something so brilliant.
Remember, this is back in the day; we're making this stuff up. We can't just talk on the radio or in our ads about being the Huggable Car Dealer. We actually have to be that through and through. From a personality and values standpoint, that's who Jim and Donna already were—kind, generous, caring.
What "Huggable" did was provide the poetic expression for the truth that was already there. Donna went out and bought every teddy bear she could find and dressed them in little red sweaters with their logo on it. It started with dozens of teddy bears, then hundreds. Then we got mascots, a merry-go-round for the children, a two-kilometer nature trail to walk your dog, a Huggable birthday club. It goes on and on.
If Walt Disney were to imagine what a used car lot could look like, it's in Fredericton, New Brunswick. It started with a story told on the radio, and what Jim and Donna did was double down on that story and blow it up.
They celebrated 40 years in business on August 21, 2019. On their 40th anniversary, more than 2,000 people showed up to shake their hands and give them a hug. They are pillars in their community. There's no other car dealership like it anywhere in Canada, and they became the largest independent used car operation in all four Atlantic Canadian provinces—and, as I said, the number one Kawasaki dealer now as they expand their product offering.
Make no mistake—and this will be really helpful for everyone listening—they have a brand identity that is highly distinctive. There's nothing else like it. That's what we explored in 12 chapters of the book. That's the mission, that's the goal: you become the category of one, and when you do that, you basically make the competition irrelevant.
And with respect to the topic and essence of your podcast, would you believe that when you've got that kind of brand, the sales get an awful lot easier?
Mark Drager: For sure. I mean, just think, listener, think what it would be like to have the power of THAT kind of brand identity working for you… in your market, your industry, for your community!
Imagine walking into a conference, tradeshow, professional association, event…walking in and everyone already knows your company, your brand.
Imagine the word is out, your story proceeds you, people already are buzzing about what it’s like to work with you, the value your company brings, why people choose you time and time again.
This is what we want. This is what every business, especially service-based businesses needs.
Because, Gair, as you just mentioned, it is so much easier to sell when people have already decided to buy from you, to work with you, and not someone else. People come in more open, more willing to talk, and they don't think you're going to try and sell them something - they might not even need.Now you're on the same side of the table. You're both working toward the same common goal, and it just makes everything so much easier.
Now, shifting gears a bit, I do want to ask you about topic you’re known for, which is the Mona Lisa Effect. What is the Mona Lisa effect?
Gair Maxwell: Yeah, that's a great question, and I never get tired of answering it, because it's universal in its scope. I remember I was on a conference stage in Vegas, and I thought, “I've got an audience of 700 people, the first time I did it, Mark, and I thought, I'll try this. I've been thinking about it for a while.” Yeah, 700 people. “What's the most famous painting in the world?” Okay, you ask them that publicly, and on the count of three, you're going to shout out the most famous painting in the world—one, two, three—what do you think they all say? Mona Lisa, okay. So what this is, she owns top-of-mind awareness. It's a metaphor for top of mind.
I discovered this on my third visit to the Louvre. I had been there a couple of times before, but it was on visit number three I looked around and I realized, “I'm not in a museum.” This, to me, was powerful. I mean literally, yes, I am in a museum, but metaphorically, I'm not.
And that's the language of brand—it is metaphorical, it is symbolic. I'm in an open market with 35,000 paintings, objects, artifacts. That's how many are in the Louvre on any given day. Thirty-five thousand competitors, all trying to seek attention, but yet only one painting gets 99% of the audience jammed and crammed, trying to get as close as they possibly can to a 30-by-21 portrait protected by bulletproof glass.
That's why I get so fascinated by it.
What happened was I started—because I've got a broadcast journalism background, I was a reporter, a newscaster, a sportscaster—I got intrigued. Well, wait a second, why? Why are they lining up, Mark? And that's a good expression tactically for the Mona Lisa effect: you've created the lineup. They're lining up, and for the most part, in many cases, they don't even know why, but they're lining up.
They line up at one coffee shop in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the heart of the French Quarter, and they line up in Paris, France, at this museum for one painting. Now, is it the biggest or most majestic painting in the building? No, not even close. Not even close. So I looked at it—it's not the best product—and yet that's the one that people are irresistibly, magnetically attracted to.
When I did the research, I found out—through the course of the book, that's a through-line of the book—that every single legend, if you dig back into history, you can pinpoint the day when the legend was actually created. So through 12 chapters, that's what we've done with this book. And in the case of the Mona Lisa, it was August 21, 1911. August 21, 1911, she was stolen. And when she was stolen, the officials at the Louvre were unaware of the theft for about 30 to 48 hours. They didn't even know she was gone. Now think about that for a second. Evidently, that means she was not the most famous painting in the world at that time.
Yeah, exactly, because if she was, they would have noticed, but they didn't. Now, what's interesting from a historical analysis point of view is the painting was already 400 years old at the time of her disappearance. So when they finally figure out she's gone, they notify the authorities, the media picks up the story, and then she's front-page news—not just front page in Paris, she went front page all over the world on the only mass medium in 1911 called the newspaper. There was no LinkedIn, there was no TikTok.
Mark Drager: There was no radio.
Gair Maxwell: There was no Mark Drager podcast to bring the enlightening news to sales professionals and business professionals everywhere. That did not exist in 1911. It's a two-year news cycle. There's scandal—the chief of police resigns in disgrace. You see what I mean? There were conspiracy theories in 1911. And then two years later, when she is finally recovered and returned, 120,000 people showed up just to see this painting they'd heard about.
And that demand has never gone away.
She left as an unknown. She comes back as a rock star. The painting is still the painting; the actual product hasn't changed, but the story around it did. She got literally millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of free publicity that no painting ever got before or since. She's the Taylor Swift of art. She wins. She's the legend.
Mark Drager: On Episode #82 I had James Altucher on the podcast and he really hit the point home about whether it’s more important to be better, or different. And listeners if you’ve not heard the talk I had with James I would highly recommend going back and giving that a listen.
But Gair, what I really like about your analogy with the Mona Lisa Effect is that it gives a real life example to what Altucher said - he said everyone focused on being better, but it’s more important to be different.
And objectively, out of the 35,000 paintings, objects, artifacts in the Louvre, there are most likely objectively better paintings hanging on the walls.
So in business, like in pop culture, art, what have you, the fact is it's not necessarily being objectively better that will help your brand become a Big Little Legend.
I'm curious: in your experience, how can businesses actively create or capitalize on these defining moments to build their own legendary stories?
Gair Maxwell: Yeah, no, that's a great question. And let's just close the loop on the Mona Lisa effect in one respect, and here's why. It's 100 years later, and everyone saw it happen again in the National Football League when a certain tight end from the Kansas City Chiefs entered into a romantic relationship with the aforementioned Taylor Swift.
Now, what happened to the ratings of Kansas City Chiefs football games as soon as that story broke? Jersey sales for number 87, Travis Kelsey, go up 400%. The last time I checked, Mark, it's over $350 million of value coming to the NFL and the Chiefs. Did the Chiefs become that much better of a football team? Did Travis Kelsey become that much better of a tight end in his receiving or his blocking? No.
So the punch line on the Mona Lisa effect is this: you could get lucky, like the girl in Paris got lucky. What happens if the thief takes another painting that morning? If he finds another painting small enough that he can hide under his smock, then what happens? Then that's the painting we'd be talking about 100 years later. That's what would have happened. What would happen if Taylor Swift fell for some guy from the Toronto Maple Leafs? I know they haven't won a Stanley Cup, Mark, since 1967…
Mark Drager: They would continue to sell out every single game for ridiculous costs and pricing, sure. But what about the guy, meaning anything?
Gair Maxwell: Right, right, right. But what about the guy she falls for? What happens to the sales of his jersey? That goes through the roof, too. So art without a story is just paint on a canvas. A business without a story is just like every other business, and then you're in the sales trenches. And when you're in the sales trenches, what are you trying to do? Slug it out on product, service, feature, advantage, benefit. You're hoping your sales charm and personality wins the day, but that's a very incremental way to do it, okay? As opposed to—you used the word exponential—wow.
So the metaphor I like to use, it's the difference between going to war. Let's use the battlefield metaphor, and if it offends someone, so be it. It's the way to explain as you sip your Starbucks cup of coffee that you bought for the inflated price of about $6.50—I saw what you just did there.
Mark Drager: It's a venti black, dark roast.
Gair Maxwell: Oh, so you didn't get the Frappuccino swirl.
Mark Drager: You know, you want to talk about offending people. I do not drink adult milkshakes, which is essentially what that is.
Gair Maxwell: Exactly. But think of how much value and profit margin they can extract from those types of drinks with their pseudo-Italian language of “venti” and “grande.” Think about it, it works for them. That's Starbucks. They have a story that we’re buying and sipping, much more than just the coffee beans.
So with sales, because it’s like this, and I empathize with sales professionals, I really do, but it's kind of like going to war. Let’s face it, Mark, you and I can agree, business is a competitive landscape, and it doesn't mean win at all costs. I still think you should win with honour and integrity and dignity and all that stuff, but it is competitive at the end of the day.
It's like going to war in the Middle Ages with bow and arrows and shields and spears and forming in a phalanx. That’s how it was all done in the Middle Ages. Well, how much easier is it to sell anything if you're like the huggable car dealer, for example, where they're already walking in the door and they're three-quarters sold? It's the metaphorical equivalent of having AK-47s, machine guns, bazookas, Sherman tanks, and a B-52 Stratofortress, because you've got a brand with a highly distinctive identity.
In other words—metaphorically, try this—you become the Ferrari of your category. When Ferrari is selling cars, Mark, and I've been to the plant in Maranello twice, when you go to Maranello, Italy (a town of 17,000 people), the buyers are showing up and they're ready to spend. They really don't care what the price tag is. Now, that's the optimum, right? That's the best in the world.
But if you can fashion a brand identity—and that's the secret. You've got to have the identity based on who you are versus—
Mark Drager: Hold on, who you are, but also who you want to be because—and I say that because you mentioned Ferrari, and I'm not a fan of Ferrari. I’ve never believed that Italian cars have good wiring. I don't want to deal with electrical issues. But if anyone knows the story of when Lamborghini decided in the early ’60s to enter racing and enter into the market by building beautiful cars—they were traditionally an agriculture and tractor company.
If we go and look at the Japanese market, there were many people who were racing motorcycles. I think Honda moved from motorcycles and bicycles into automotive. But back to Lamborghini, the visionary, the owner, the man behind the brand, decided that he wanted to move from farming equipment—tractors, agricultural equipment—into automotive, into performance, into racing. Everyone laughed at them, and so there was no story there.
So it has to be, I imagine, yes, it has to be true to who you are, your story. You can't put on someone else's suit. You can't live every day as a lie. Your company can't go to market pretending to be something it's not. But at the same time, there should be some level of aspiration to this. There should be some level of vision and whatever that next step is as well, so you can step into the next version of your company, your brand, your differentiation.
Gair Maxwell : Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. But let’s go away from Lamborghini just to help people see this in their imagination and in terms of vision. You just reminded me of folks out in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, in a completely different industry. Very, very competitive. They do bathrooms, doors, and windows. Do you have any idea how many bathroom, door, and window installation firms there are in the United States of America?
Mark Drager: Probably like 35,000.
Gair Maxwell : Try 592,000. Really. It’s a huge number. I met the CEO in 2018, and he fell in love with the story of the huggable car dealer. I’ll tell you why. He didn’t get stuck on the teddy bears and the cheesiness; he saw strategy.
We’re using the power of story, the power of symbolic language, and that’s something not a lot of people pay attention to. We know there are languages the human brain understands that are symbolic and metaphorical. People understand that; otherwise, they wouldn’t go crazy for the Stanley Cup the way they do. These are powerful forms of communication.
So this guy’s doing about $35–40 million in revenue. He’s got about 130 employees. He, too, is in the middle of nowhere—Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania—less than 10,000 people, but he’s got a much bigger vision. His name is B.J. Werzyn, and there’s something about the local culture around Mechanicsburg. I’m going to call it very military-centric, and I think it has to do historically, because Gettysburg is basically right around the corner.
B.J. is a big patriot, big fan of America’s military. We do these executive boot camps every year with a limited number of companies. In this case, we were going to work in Hershey, near there, with West Shore Home—that’s their name. Anyone can look this up. When you go to West Shore Home’s YouTube channel, because they’re putting these stories out on YouTube, you’ll see the result of something that started as far back as April of 2018.
When we did the boot camp, we’re trying to dig in—picture flip charts, whiteboards, extraction exercises with senior leadership teams. Mark, some of the qualities they were telling me in the room that day were: “We’re like a steamroller, aggressive tenacity, ferocity.”
As the day unfolded, I thought, “Isn’t this interesting? They’re kind of like U.S. Navy SEALs meets the Marine Corps, with a little bit of Clint Eastwood thrown into the mix.” And they’re doing home renos, right? You can already pick it up. That’s as far from “huggable” as you can imagine. They’re diametrically opposite in terms of their values and what they believe in.
What’s evolved are company values, things like—and it’s right there in their leadership guide—default aggressive, extreme ownership, decentralized command, laws of combat.
Mark Drager: They’ve listened to Jocko’s book Extreme Ownership.
Gair Maxwell : Exactly. If you know about Jocko, after our session and engagement, they worked with Jocko and his team because they felt comfortable pursuing this area. Let’s talk results. Five years later, from $35–40 million in revenue and 130 employees—and withstanding the chaos of a global pandemic—by 2023, West Shore Home has over 3,000 employees, doing north of a billion dollars in revenue, 40-plus locations, 20 different states. In 2024, they will wrap up their second straight billion-dollar year.
Now, I don’t know about you, Mark, but I’ve never seen a guy go from $35–40 million to a billion in a five-year span. I’ve not seen it.
Mark Drager: Did they grow mainly through acquisition?
Gair Maxwell: There was acquisition involved, certainly, but what happened is when they got absolute clarity—and this is what they tell me—when they got absolute clarity on who they were beyond their products and services, that’s when the thing started to take off. They got comfortable in their own skin.
Until that boot camp, they were almost sheepish and almost too shy about what they were like culturally. I said, “No, no, no, guys. We’re going to double down hard on this,” which led to things like “Baths for the Brave.” They do a program called West Shore for Warriors. If you see this, they’re reaching out to work with America’s veterans, people who have slipped through the cracks. They’re showing up—and I remember when this concept was first floated at that boot camp, it was conceptual and very embryonic—but now, there it is, in living colour on YouTube.
They’re showing up with a truck, a crew, and materials to take care of a soldier. How about we do that, right? Because—and this is in Chapter 9 of the book—we’re actually in the media business. We’re a media company first, home renovations second. We bring the crew to document the story and put the story out there to honour this individual who sacrificed to provide freedom. Would you believe, Mark, this has an audience in the online world?
Would you believe that these kinds of stories resonate with job candidates? Here’s the number one issue in that space: How are we going to attract good people to come to work, to put up bathrooms, doors, windows, load tubs, and put up drywall—how are we going to do that?
The concept of the brand was built on this idea: we’re going to build it only for people who want to push themselves to get better. Well, as 2024 comes to an end, they average 21,000 job applications a month. Last year, the number was 13,000.
I know the business world is so focused now on execution and implementation, without taking any time for reflection, contemplation, and figuring out some of the biggest strategic questions, which is from a brand identity point of view: who are you, beyond products and services? Do you have something that we can work with to bring to the market that will clearly separate you from everybody else?
Mark Drager: I'd be curious about when this has gone off the rails. You know, with these types of stories, there's a bit of survivor bias where we can certainly point out when it worked. But this isn't going to work all the time. So when it doesn't work, why and how do we pivot?
Gair Maxwell : It's called leadership, and I'm not abdicating the responsibility. I can't do it for them. I can't want it more than they do. I can't make excuses for the CEO, the leader, the supreme allied commander, who doesn't have the courage to follow through and gets talked off the ledge by the committee.
When the committee gets involved, and when too many traditional marketers get involved, this thing is done. It's not going to work because, deep down, we're not doing marketing. And I dare say we're not even doing brands so much. We're trying to create the legend, and to the best of my knowledge, no one else is doing that.
We've had projects go sideways. We've had other projects go, shall we say, stale for a while, then they come back because the CEO figures it out: "Oh, you mean I have to lead this?" Yes. And we've become, as you know, very—oh, we need consensus. Oh, we need everyone around the table to agree. We need Kumbaya. We need diversity and inclusion. Give me a break. Only leaders create legends.
Did everyone agree with Steve Jobs on the direction that Apple needed to take to survive in September of 1997? Did everyone agree? I just got off the phone this morning, just before we got on, talking to a company in Western Canada, and this is what I've learned along the way.
So I'll tell your audience the same thing I told him: at the end of the day, you're the guy who's going to make it or break it, and I just need to find out how broad your shoulders are.
See, Jim Gilbert is a great example, Mark. Did that take guts, to go to market and be called the huggable car dealer? He's still the benchmark for guts. So there are four leadership qualities that I'm listening for all the time. People call me up, they say they want to do this, but I put them through a bit of a qualifying process.
The four leadership qualities, Mark—I'm glad you asked the question, because I can spit them out pretty fast—are curiosity, courage, vision, and initiative.
If you are already skeptical and cynical, which people are in my speaking groups and my audiences when they sit there with their arms folded and already know all the answers, well, clearly you're not at all curious about how legends are created. But does it take courage? Yes. Does it take vision to see beyond the product and service? And does it take initiative to pull the trigger, and in Nike terminology, "just do it," without knowing all the answers right away? Because this is about discovery, not deliverables, and we set people on a path to discover the legend that's already sitting inside them. It's already there, it's just got to be dug out.
Mark Drager: Gair, I really appreciate your time and sharing this. It's one of those things that is challenging. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, "Gosh, I would love to have a legendary brand. I would love to have the reputation. I would love to make sales easier. I would love to have this unique story. I would love to build something that goes beyond a commoditized market, beyond a simple product, something where my competition can erode my value prop or my competitive advantage almost overnight."
I'm glad we're touching on this toward the end, because there are a few things that I see happen in the market. One: leaders look for the—what do they say?—the tail to wag the dog, so to speak. They go, "Tell me what will work, and I will do that. Tell me how to do this, and I will do that. But I don't want to invest in anything that won't work, and I'll just become whomever I need to be. Just tell me what to do," and it's like, hold on, let's start with business strategy. Let's start with vision. Let's start with where we want to go. We can't expect brand or storytelling or marketing to somehow lead the way. This has to come from within, and it has to make sense.
So I see that, and then the second thing is, many leaders are comfortable with bold, decisive action until the kind of messy middle, right? There's this messy middle where, if you're on one peak and you're looking toward the other peak, and you're going to move from peak to peak, that's great, but you're about to walk through a valley of doubt and uncertainty, and people questioning what you're doing, and you questioning what you're doing and the investment and the spend.
So what would you say to those of us who are excited about this, but realize the level of commitment means we have to embrace the fact that there is going to be doubt, there is going to be questioning, we are going to question ourselves, and others—our shareholders, our stakeholders, our senior partners—they may be questioning what we're doing as well?
Gair Maxwell: Yeah, that's where you just dialed it in, Mark, very elegantly too. Everything you just spoke about spoke to courage. You can't create the legend in anything unless you're prepared to do hard things. I will never sugarcoat this to anyone. This is hard, and if that scares 99% of the market away, so be it.
Mark Drager: I would say good.
Gair Maxwell: That's good, because I only want to work with the people who realize, "Oh, I've got something inside me I haven't been able to figure out." But there's a universal truth here, Mark: you can't read the label when you're inside the bottle. It can't be done. This is why so many people struggle with this. Now, I get into it in Chapter Two; Jim Gilbert couldn't see it either. I couldn't see it for myself, for Big Little Legends.
So I want you to imagine this. I prefer to tell the story of others, but I'll share with you exactly what happened. This huggable thing takes off, okay? I remember the car count, Mark. Per month, it goes from about 15–20 cars a month to 40, 60, 80. I remember the month when Jim called me up: 127 cars went through that place, 144 cars. I still remember those numbers because we couldn't believe it ourselves, right? It's almost too good to be true. Yes, I know that I live in this world now.
Do you think for a second, Mark, that watching my friend blow this thing up—because I know the four magic words are really working their magic—do you think I would want the same thing for myself? Don't you think?
Mark Drager: I don't know how you would react. But it's like, magic in a bottle. We've captured it once. Let's do it again. Let's do it.
Gair Maxwell: Let's do it, right? I spent, without exaggeration, well over a decade searching, wondering, and experimenting—well over a decade—and I couldn't figure it out for myself. That's universally applicable: I can't read the label when I'm inside my own bottle.
And so I finally found—I talk about it a bit in the book—a trusted friend who picked up on, "Hey, you're a brand historian." As soon as Clay said those words, I'm like, "Yes, I got it right away, history." Yeah, I'm a history nerd, are you kidding me? Some would say amateur historian. It started with sports history—Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers, and the Brothers Esposito. Then it became military history—the two World Wars and Vietnam. I'm fascinated by that stuff. Then it became music history. I mean, who else knows all the lineups of Deep Purple, all the different editions of Deep Purple? Who knows this stuff? Who?
Then I got into reporting, which is history in a hurry. I'm leaning into the historian who has been there since he was seven or eight years old. I remember family gatherings, the extended family, the relatives: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I remember answering, "A historian," but I didn't even know what that was.
Jim Gilbert's huggable thing—it's far from cheesy when you realize, hey, that comes from a real place. This comes from a very real place too. It's all based on a love of history and a fascination with those moments when everything hung in the balance. What if the Allies don't secure that beachhead on June 6, 1944, at Normandy? What if they're driven back into the sea? What if the Nazis had more time to develop their missiles and weapons, and maybe they get the bomb first?
That's what I find fascinating, and I use the lessons of history in business to correlate: "Okay, this is what Apple did, this is what Red Bull did, this is what Starbucks did." Then how do you apply that? Big Little Legends is a metaphor for small to mid-sized companies that pack the punch of a Rocky Balboa with their brand.
Mark Drager: I've been speaking with Gair Maxwell , who is the author of the book Big Little Legends: How Everyday Leaders Build Irresistible Brands. To wrap up, I always like to end with this question: if you gave us one tip or one strategy to help us sell more, what would that be?
Gair Maxwell: You've got to lean into your own story as a brand. You only have two to six words to own as a brand. And if the company you work for does not embrace this philosophy, then you do it for yourself. You become the podcaster, the guy or gal who shoots videos. You build your own personal brand within a brand, whatever it is you've got to do.
You've got to bring story to market—story. It's the only thing humans deeply care about, Mark. It's the only thing they will ever share. When they start sharing your story, then you've got the audience doing the marketing for you for free because everyone's got one of these devices. But if it's not on video and it's not on digital platforms, no one's ever going to share your story.
That's part of the secret: you've got to find something about you as an individual or as a company that separates you from everybody else in a very highly distinctive way.
