[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone, welcome to the First Customer Podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Jon Wise. He is the CEO and founder of JWC out of Philadelphia, right? Is that right, John?

[00:00:39] Jon: Yes, it 

[00:00:40] Jay: You're in Philly. you're Mr. Philly right now. You're in the

[00:00:42] Jon: here in the heart of Atlanta. Yeah, exactly. 

[00:00:44] Jay: You're in the heart.

of where things are going on.

How are you, man? 

[00:00:49] Jon: I'm great. How are you, my friend?

[00:00:50] Jay: I'm good. I'm good. I've seen you around a bunch of places. We finally got to talk and meet up, which was very cool. tell me, where did you grow up and did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur later in life?

[00:01:01] Jon: yeah, absolutely. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. Suburban, deep suburban Atlanta. I like to joke that it's like where Atlanta fades into Georgia. so it's kind of that, that cross over there. That's, a tricky balance. yeah, and I grew up in a pretty entrepreneurial environment, I'd say. My, both my parents started, they had both my parents started their own businesses and had their own endeavors.

So I think I didn't grow up in a, my early childhood didn't grow up in a world where people had normal nine to fives and that kind of thing. So I think that definitely, helped influence how I, how I saw, you know, what my career could look like. I don't, never thought of it that way, but looking back, I'm sure that had an impact.

[00:01:40] Jay: What kind of businesses do they run?

[00:01:43] Jon: We'll focus on my dad. He ran a,he ran a software business. So back in the day when people were, buggied around and on horseback, people would buy software for their computers on like floppy disks. And you had to go to a software store. So he ran a local software store. In Tucker, Georgia.

and so he had a big warehouse. They did. I think they had a, they must've had a catalog or something. I don't exactly know what the setup was, but they shipped a lot of merchandise. They had a pretty big warehouse in the back. I guess it would probably like 6, 000 square feet, 10, 000 square feet of warehouse and then like a small storefront.

So there must've been some kind of online, not online, but some kind of ordering system. Like, I don't know.so yeah, so it was a software business, computer games.

[00:02:26] Jay: I'm sure he's still there selling software today, right? I'm

[00:02:29] Jon: No, definitely not.

[00:02:31] Jay: my kids have no idea what a floppy disk is, or, I guess some of my kids know what a CD is, at least, but, the younger ones are have no idea what any of that stuff is.

[00:02:40] Jon: my kids, one time, my, my ex and I, we were cleaning out, a trunk that we had in the living room or maybe one of the kids were just digging through it and they found a VHS tape and they like, they held it up by the corner. So what is it? They were afraid to even like, 

[00:02:54] Jay: can't touch it You can't touch. You want to get your finger grease on the very delicate VHS tape.

[00:03:00] Jon: that was so funny. He's like, what is this?

[00:03:03] Jay: My mom actually brought me 1 when I was on vacation, like, a month ago, which is like, here's your VHS. I'm like, mom, what am I going to do with this? Like, I don't

have like, you're giving me homework. Like, I don't want homework. I don't have, like, take this home and find some way to convert it to digital format.

So, So, what was next? you grew up in Georgia, and then what? Did you jump right into starting businesses? Did you have any, you know, kind of childhood, you know, exposure to starting businesses, or did you wait till you got older?

[00:03:30] Jon: It's funny. We're talking about that. Cause, I was ruminating on this, you know, cause you're, you know, it's the first customer podcast. So, I was thinking about, well, actually the first customer was, so this software store was in Tucker, Georgia, which is like a suburb of Atlanta, like I said, and they had like a festival day, like Tucker days and where all the people that owned a shop in Tucker would have a stand and like they'd shut down the streets and people walk around and it's kind of farmer's market.

You know what it is? And so I guess my dad's software store had a stand and I decided that I was going to have a stand next to that stand. And, this is kind of a little bit of family lore cause I don't have a ton of memories of this, but, behind my dad's shop was an empty lot. and I just collected rocks out of that lot and sold Tucker rocks, Tucker days.

And the joke is that I sold more than they sold at the actual store. But it's just a funny idea, I guess, as a kid, like selling rocks, Tucker rocks to people that live in Tucker. And these are the same rocks that they could find in their yard, but they're buying them from me. So,so yeah, that's, I think that's my first sale ever was these were these Tucker rocks, I guess.

So, 

[00:04:38] Jay: Hustling at an early age.

[00:04:39] Jon: I guess, 

[00:04:40] Jay: early age. I love that. so what was next? I mean, obviously we're marching towards JWC here, but like, what were kind of some of the major milestones, to, you know, in your entrepreneurial journey? I mean, you know, obviously you were selling rocks next to your dad's floppy disc stand, which is like such a funny sentence in general, but,what was kind of next towards your journey?

[00:05:01] Jon: So yeah, went to college in Boston, went to music school and, had a great time there and then got involved in like the music industry and was recording and producing and delivering sandwiches and nothing glamorous, you know, just kind of a combination of paying the bills and doing what I loved.

and, ended up getting into, event production, and then started freelancing for agencies. Peace. So it's kind of getting us closer. and, through the process of freelancing for agencies and creative direction and filming and that kind of stuff, the, my Instagram feed really blew up, and so blew up like in 2012 standards, nothing compared to what it is now.

And just like my aesthetic, you know, I was surprised that it did as well as it did. And I kept getting on the discover page on Instagram, which was kind of fun. So back then everyone had the same discover page, on the whole platform. So I kept landing on discover page. And, I remember one day, my, I got a DM from someone that claimed to be the VP of global marketing at Ralph Lauren.

And she had been following me, and she's like, Oh, I've been following your journey and loving, loving seeing your account blow up and love your aesthetic. We at Ralph Lauren are launching a new brand soon and we'd love for your, you to come in and freelance as a creative director and shoot for the brand book that we're doing for this new,this new store that we, this new kind of store that we want to open.

and I'm right. I showed it to my partner at the time and was like, which one of our friends is messing with us? Like, this can't be this can't be. And I did not have a LinkedIn. Neither of us had a LinkedIn. So she's like, well, let me look them up and see if they're real. So she got, LinkedIn account or you could see, I guess, without having an account.

It's like, no, this is who it says he is. and I remember just,I never heard of anybody like landing a gig on social media before this is, you know, 2012, 2013, 2010. And I just had, I just like laid down on the floor in the living room cause I couldn't like to get like a Nash, like an international multinational, you know, brand like that to reach out directly was just incredible.

So, yeah, so it was kind of fun. so that was another kind of first for me. It was like a first social cell, which is kind of cool. 

[00:07:05] Jay: I love that 

[00:07:06] Jon: That happens every day. Now we both do that in our sleep now, but, back then I had never heard of it at least. so it was kind of a fun first for me.

[00:07:15] Jay: one of our first clients, obviously not Ralph Lauren or comparable, but, Chris Sarah's company, Arkweb.

I knew Mike Bolzerzak, who was one of their, lead, like, UX design artist guys, and he reached out through Instagram was like, Hey, man, you're still doing that QA thing. And like, that was like, one of our, like, it was, I was, that was, I had to go buy a suit to go pitch at Chris's office down when he had his office.

And now he's at Fittler near you.

but, yeah, so social media is still a way to, to, you know, to make it happen. so what's next? How do we get to JWC?

[00:07:50] Jon: Okay, we're gonna hop, skip and jump a little bit because I have a very long winding story. But,when my, as my instagram was blowing up, I ended up starting a video, a video production company, video production agency. So we focus on content strategies and execution. So we would produce the content we helped brand strategize around.

I think we're pretty early in that we called it a video content agency. And at the time I couldn't find another person that went by that. Now it's a little bit more common. And we thought kind of holistically about creating batches of content and distributing it across multiple channels, which at the time video companies were trying to sell like one video at a time at a premium.

And I was like, let's take a step back and think about, let's buy a three day production and try to create 50 pieces of content from that, which is kind of unique, at the time. Now it's kind of how everybody thinks about content, which makes a lot more sense to me. I had a pandemic pivot cause it can't really film a lot in the, in the pandemic when you're locked inside.

Yeah. and I was really wanting, I was itching to get into full service marketing.

so, yeah, we took, so ended up, starting a firm in DC. It was a full service agency for B2B tech firms, PD, B2B tech, like SAS and, tech enabled services. I had a great time doing that, built a great team. That team did some really incredible work in a really short amount of time, which is fun, ended up exiting that agency, and then, started my own firm, JWC, in 2023.

So that's how we got to where we are.

[00:09:11] Jay: Who was the first customer?

How did you start it? 

[00:09:14] Jon: All right.

[00:09:15] Jay: it?

[00:09:16] Jon: So the first customer, you know, I thought that, I wasn't sure exactly what it was going to be. So I started JWC as a. Kind of a place to put some consulting gigs that were coming in. but I had a, an old contact come through and asked me for my video days and asked me to fix a video for him that he had another firm, produce.

and he just really wasn't happy with the way it turned out. They didn't really kind of understand the problem that they were trying to solve with the video and the production. So we recorded a new VO and created a new script. Recorded a new video, swapped out some clips. and I was talking to him. I was like, Hey, you know, what's your go to market strategy?

Like what's, you know, cause it was this life science SaaS platform. I was like, Hey, what's your go to market strategy? what are you doing for, content creation? What's, you know, how's the, this website's pretty rough. Like, what are we doing here? What's the plan? He's like, Oh, you do all those things.

I was like, absolutely. So, so I was able to kind of pitch him on what it would look like to work together. And we've been working together ever since that was about two years ago. And we launched a whole go to market strategy, a beautiful new brand, an incredible website, and, generated really a ton of opportunity and a lot of noise in a pretty weak, like strange and niche industry for him.

and that's, we've been just thrilled with those results. and it's an ongoing relationship. We just had lunch the other day. So it's kind of fun to see that go all the way from, like, Hey, help me fix this little video to let's work together for two years and launch this brand from scratch.

[00:10:36] Jay: I love that. what made you go John Wise creative? If you go to your website, you see a picture of you, right? how do you think about and position personal brand versus your company? Because you're very obviously intertwined in what the brand of JWC is. How do you kind of mix those two things together?

[00:10:59] Jon: Yeah, absolutely. it's a great question. I've always struggled with personal brands and trying to figure out like, how do Ihow do I sell what I do? so my other two agencies were, you know, had a name and it was not related to me necessarily. and so I decided with this one to really lean in on personal brands, cause I think people know me and they buy from me and I'm really good in a, in like a sales meeting and I can build rapport, I think really quickly with, with a lead, you know, and a contact and really their needs.

and so let's cut out this idea of a brand, so much. And, and really focused on this, on the idea of like leading with the personal brand. So I think that was like, that was a big growth for me personally. Cause I was previously like really uncomfortable with that. in the past, but had finally, I think, gotten old enough and not care enough, about like, you know, being nervous about how people would feel about that to just lean in on it.

I think that we've also seen a big shift in personal branding in the marketplace. where people are leading with their personal brand, even if they have a company name, I think of like Alex Formosy, who is the face of acquisition. com as their family office. And they have a portfolio of companies and offer a wide variety of services.

he's done an amazing job of leading with personal brand, even as the main driver of the actual brand, which doesn't even share his name. yeah, so that's been, it's an interesting shift to see, in the industry and it's I don't have to have brand attributes as much as, and like come up with a brand.

It's the brand is who I am and how I like to show up in a relationship. A business relationship is, are the attributes of the company. And that's, it is a reflection of me. So it's a little bit easier of a branding process as well. but it's such a blind spot, I think, for most, founders to really lead with personal brand.

Cause they're normally uncomfortable. They're really good at something and they're normally pretty uncomfortable with like this. The feelings of like self promotion. so for me, I think it was just a lean in moment and try to,lean into that discomfort and get over it,and see what happens.

the worst that happens is it doesn't work. And I have a couple other name ideas that we could have gone with. JWC and see what we can do. If it doesn't get traction, then we can always pull back and, come up, launch one of the other names.

[00:13:10] Jay: I like that.yeah, I, I guess the question to that is, and you pointed out, like, so many people have that problem, me included, you included, you know, a bunch of my agency owner friends included. I do think it's a very important thing to get over. Right? Like you said, like, eventually you're just like, for whatever reason, there's these, like, moments in life where, like, it's your diet or it's your workout routine, or it's the way you do whatever.

And you're just like. Yeah. Now I'm going to do it different and you do it different and it changes and things are great. Is there anything you could suggest to somebody who's afraid of the personal braiding side of things or maybe they're embarrassed or they're worried about, you know, I don't know what people think, like what is it?

Like, how does somebody get over that and just start, you know, trying to be a thought leader or trying to be, you know, themselves a little more in public as opposed to like being the man behind the curtain, which as we know, and like you said, it helps a lot when you're selling stuff. Like people want to buy, it's a bold, tired cliche at this point, but like people buy from people, like they don't buy the company.

So like, what are some, like at least one suggestion that you would give somebody to like kind of kick them out of that, you know, shell that they're in to not get out there and personal brand.

[00:14:24] Jon: Yeah. I don't know about you. but we're probably a similar age, but I'm trying to like live the rest of my life for this few regrets as possible. And I, every time I look back at a past chapter, I wish I had pushed harder on. Being myself and putting myself out there and just stop caring what other people think because I, they probably don't even the thing I'm worried about.

They aren't even isn't even on their radar. Like, it's completely in my head. Like, there's an audience of naysayers in my head. That doesn't actually exist in real life. nobody. 

[00:14:55] Jay: And everybody's thinking the same thing. Everybody's worrying about themselves.

[00:14:58] Jon: Yeah, exactly. Totally. No one's gonna remember if I wear this shirt on Tuesday and then again on Thursday, like literally.

And if they do, like who? That's the shirt I wear I'm wearing today. Like people aren't even noticing that kind of stuff. And people do know me as a person, you know, people know you as a person. So like lean in on the fact that people buy from. Relationships. They don't necessarily buy from brands and the amount of work it takes to put that kind of value, like a lifetime's worth of work value into your brand, is enormous.

But if I attach my name, my personal name with what I'm doing professionally, then there's, it's a very short walk to get there and kind of be like, Oh, I know John, I had dinner with him the other day. I didn't realize he's in marketing. I need some marketing help, or my friend needs some marketing help.

Let me just get them connected. It's just, it's a very short walk, instead of like, Oh, John started this thing and it's called, you know, gadgets and gadgets does this stuff. And like, we've got to create this whole brand story around gadgets. And you know what, like, that's just, there's nothing wrong with that at all.

And that's such a normal path to go. But when you're starting something new and you're small, especially you're in services, you don't have a product. It's like, just get over it, you know?

[00:16:06] Jay: Yeah, I think people like, like, think that they need to create this mystique around what they're doing, like, behind this brand. And to your

point, like, especially if you're selling services, like,

it couldn't be more personal when you're a small services company. Like, people are only buying from you. Like, they're not,

there's no system in place that they're like, buying from this big machine.

They're buying from you. So I love that point. It's a really great point. so, If you started over again today, and I know it's only been about a year, I think, since 2023, If you start over again today, would you do anything different? How

[00:16:45] Jon: that's a great question. If I started over again today. I would, shore up my personal brands messaging a little bit more. So I think as we do that all the time for clients, like brand messaging, market positioning, and I was really focused on our first couple of customers. Making sure they had a great experience.

so now we're backfilling with a little bit more of our own market positioning and clarifying that. that's one answer. I think, Here's a better answer than that. If I had one thing to do over from the start is I would start, I would start selling sooner, start proactively selling sooner. I'd build that email list.

I would start producing content. I would do all those things. I waited for about a year, actually a year and change before I started actually promoting what we did. Cause I wanted to work on the process. and I think, I was being a little too precious with, making sure that we had an incredible internal process, which created great results.

I'm not ashamed that we have great results, but I think, you know, get selling, just get selling. And solve it, you know, solve it along the way.

[00:17:53] Jay: do smaller shops with less budget compare, compete with. Other companies with a massive marketing budget. In the same space, and maybe in the same city, or general region, like, how do they do that? Can they do that? Do they go another way? Like, is there a way to be super effective with a small budget compared to a big budget?

Like, how would you tell somebody approach that? knowing that they had a smaller budget compared to their big competitor.

[00:18:21] Jon: we solve this problem with our clients all the time. They are small, they are not funded. One of our clients, you know, is up against the Google funded, SAS solution, you know, and they've got hundreds of millions of dollars. And this, our client does not have hundreds of millions of dollars at all.

They have, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars. And so how do we do that? And I think the first thing I always tell people is like to niche down. And then go white glove. So, cause the thing you do have is time. The thing you can do is care more. thing you can't do is you can't spend more than them and your product probably isn't going to hit as hard as their product does.

but you can solve a more niche problem and you can make sure they have a great experience and they build a relationship with you directly or your team directly. So yeah, niche down and white glove up. Those are the two things that we normally focus on with our clients that are in the David and Goliath situation.

[00:19:11] Jay: makes a lot of sense. All right, I got one more question for you. non business related. If you could do anything on earth. And you knew you wouldn't fail. What would it be?

[00:19:23] Jon: If I could do anything on earth and I knew I wouldn't fail, I've always wanted to drive to the tip of South America.

[00:19:33] Jay: Never heard that before. And I love that answer.

[00:19:35] Jon: I think that would be an incredible road trip to do. And it's, I've looked into it. It's very perilous. there's a lot that can go wrong and you're very far from help at some different, very key junctures. So I don't know if I'm ever going to make that trip, but I would 

[00:19:48] Jay: couldn't fail. You couldn't fail. So you could, you know,

in this scenario, you could make it. Did you see that guy who ran the whole length of Africa?

[00:19:55] Jon: I've seen the guy that ran the length of Africa. I've seen the guy who did the motorcycle to the bottom of South America. And that was cool. I think he 

[00:20:02] Jay: South America. Sorry. You said South America, not Africa, South

America. Okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah. The runner guy was Africa, I think.

[00:20:08] Jon: Yes. It was Africa. 

[00:20:10] Jay: Which seems even more terrifying, like with all

[00:20:12] Jon: Oh, a hundred 

[00:20:13] Jay: political stuff and all

the like, Yeah.

like, no, thank

[00:20:16] Jon: Civil wars. People run around with machetes and machine guns.

And yeah, 

[00:20:20] Jay: like mix in some lions and like other weird shit that you're going to see along the way.

I'm good

[00:20:24] Jon: Wildlife aside. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:20:26] Jay: that's wild. All right. Well, I hope you get to make your drive one day. Wait

from here. Is that what you're saying? Like, you want to drive from here to the tip of

South America? 

[00:20:35] Jon: ideally, I would start in like Nova Scotia or somewhere pretty far 

[00:20:38] Jay: Oh, like way far.

[00:20:39] Jon: Yeah. I want to do the whole 

[00:20:41] Jay: That's pretty cool. All

right. That's right. That's one of the more unique answers I've ever heard. I love that. Never actually heard that before. I usually get like, you know. Go to space,

all these other kinds, but yours, that's a great answer. I love that. All

right. 

[00:20:54] Jon: zero desire to go to 

[00:20:55] Jay: You don't want to go to space.

All right. Even if you couldn't fail. All right. Well, you know, let's see, teach their own. If people want to find you, John, how do they do that?

[00:21:03] Jon: Yeah, absolutely. They can look me up on LinkedIn. I've got a fun newsletter there that I do called the from the desk of Jon Wise. They can check that out. they can go to Jon Wise Creative. and we also have an accelerated, offering called brand camp. Then can go to, let's go to brand camp.

com for smaller businesses.

[00:21:18] Jay: Beautiful. Any events coming up for you? Are you doing Capcom or anything in Philly?

[00:21:23] Jon: We're doing Capcom, the Mid, the Mid Atlantic, Capital Conference. they can, people can find us at Health in Vegas, in October, HLTH. com. yeah, we'll be around and especially on the Philadelphia stuff. We're at all the networking events there as well. So we've got the whole team coming.

[00:21:39] Jay: All right, man. Well, you're fantastic. I appreciate you being on. I'll see you down at the Fiddler sometime soon. I'm sure. Other than that, enjoy the rest of your week. All right.

[00:21:48] Jon: You as well.

[00:21:49] Jay: Thanks, John. See you, buddy. 

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