Interviewee Name: Kevin Popović, Communications Director
Company Name: Ideahaus
Website: http://www.ideahaus.com
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Kevin Popović: My job has evolved. I call myself a communications director so I help my clients direct all their communications – marketing, strategy, corporate identity and branding, advertising, design issues, public relations and quite a lot of social media these days. Quite simply, I help my clients figure out what to say and how to say it to their target markets.
Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?
Kevin Popović: If I had two days in a row that were the same I would be so surprised. Some days I work out of my beach studio in Delmar here in San Diego. Some days I’m at a comic convention interviewing different people in the comic, television and movie business. Some days I may be in New York working with a CEO client. Other days I may be in Hollywood at a celebrity awards gifts suite, some days I am in our Pittsburgh studio. Sunday I’ll be on stage at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. So my typical day is an adventure – every day is an adventure, and it’s a new adventure.
Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
Kevin Popović: I look at the pile of bills that I have to pay this month. The challenge as an entrepreneur is that there is no one telling you what time you have to be at work, and there is no one telling you what has to get done today, and if your intent is being self-employed and an entrepreneur, that is one of the first things that you have to overcome is being able to motivate yourself and stay motivated.
Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
Kevin Popović: Not a damn thing! And I say that in all sincerity. I had a path earlier in my career to go and work for somebody or to not go and work for somebody, and I worked for some people, and then I decided that that wasn’t for me. But the things that I got involved in throughout my life have all been different types of communications, whether it was video production or event production, or design, or advertising, or website development, all of those things that I have done have gotten me to where I am today and I’m very happy where I am today.
Avil Beckford: What's the most important business or other discovery you've made in the past year?
Kevin Popović: I’m realizing the opportunity in social media, and I have been involved in social media for six years. And every week I learn something new, but it has been over the last year that clients are realizing success as we are doing some very innovative things, realizing how many people are connecting and what that means. That’s my greatest observation.
Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?
Kevin Popović:
- The economy which I can do nothing about.
- My competitors which I can do nothing about.
- Me and my company which I can do everything about. So that’s where I’m focusing on, me, my company, and my team.
Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?
Kevin Popović: Me! I do not mean that in an arrogant way. But every ship has a captain, someone who tells you to steer left, steer right, watch out for that iceberg. I’m the captain of our ship Ideahaus, and there are lots of different ships and lots of good captains. But what’s different about us is me.
Avil Beckford: What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?
Kevin Popović: I think most people do what’s expected. I think most people don’t pay attention to the compulsories because they are expected, and there isn’t a lot of innovation. I think we do innovation very well.
Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?
Kevin Popović: One of our clients is a retailer of pop culture apparel and that includes t-shirts, hoodies, belt buckles, patches, hats and things like Superman t-shirts. The challenge is that you can get Superman t-shirts anywhere, so why get it from my guy?
We focused on making it a priority for people to understand why you got it from our client, and we focused on their branding, and we focused on listening, and communicating back with the customers, and we came to what you call an understanding, a quid pro quo with our customers. They can pay attention to us, if we give them something to pay attention to, so we developed an online show that provide subject matter that we are both interested in, for instance superheroes. We give them entertainment, 5-minute daily shows about superheroes, or movies, television, or the things they are interested in, and in return they watch their show, and our commercials are placed within that show, and they buy t-shirts. That’s how we took a client with a commodity product, turn them into a premium, and developed a communications channel with his target audience.
I learned that you have to have an objective understanding of who you are in the marketplace, and where you fit in. I think we helped our client do that. I think this is something that is hard for businesses to do, and I think it’s hard for communications professionals to do that with their clients. But when we both do that, I think it’s when we are able to make much more informed and effective decisions.
Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
Kevin Popović: There is a gentleman named Bob Friday, and he had a company called TGIF Productions that did video and event production. While I was a struggling entrepreneur, and trying to figure out where I was going to fit in this communications business, I had to take a part-time job in retail. Every so often Bob would come in to the store and buy something new for his office, and he’d share a story and I would chime in about what I thought about his story. We started communicating back and forth.
I ended up offering to help him with these projects on the side to gain experience, and after four or five months of this he started paying me to freelance and after six months of that he brought me on in a full-time position as assistant producer. For four years I traveled all over the country learning about video and event production and how to deal with clients.
I saw how he ran his business and I also saw what I did not like about how he ran his business. So I attribute one of my big breaks to Bob Friday, and thank him for the opportunities he provided and the lessons that he taught me. Many of which are things that I knew that I did not want to do. My father taught me a long time ago to learn from my mistakes and I’ve tried to apply that to everybody I’ve worked with. As much as I have learned from them about what to do, I’ve also learned what not to do.
Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
evin Popović: One of my biggest failures was a very early entrepreneurial effort I had called Fairytales Productions. We were going to do event marketing for skateboard manufacturers. On the west coast we were going to do events on the east coast where they didn’t have that great of a presence. I put together a very large contest, and Wendy’s was going to be a sponsor and give us $5,000 toward the promotion. Everything got booked and three days beforehand, I find out that Wendy’s has changed their mind, they are not going to give me $5,000 in money, they are going to give me $5,000 in sandwich coupons. Vendors did not want to be paid in sandwich coupons. So it was a disaster and I ended up closing the company, and what I learned is to get everything in writing no matter who the relationship is with.
Avil Beckford: What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its reoccurrence?
Kevin Popović: I don’t think there is a biggest, there is a bunch of little ones and I think you learn from each one. You get your hands slapped, or your fingers burnt and you pay attention and try not to do what you did to get your hands slapped or to burn your fingers. Eyes wide open going into situations and no excuses coming out of them. You make constant decisions and you have to live with the consequences.
Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?
Kevin Popović: I worked with one of my best friends to start a business. I learned that this best friend had embezzled money from the company, and I gave him the chance to fix what he had broken. He didn’t take me up on the opportunity so I had him arrested and pressed charges. It reminded me that there is a difference between personal relationships and business relationships, and that when you mix the two, and you will, each has their own responsibilities. That’s what I learned.
Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?
Kevin Popović:
- Getting beat up at the age of 15 for shooting my mouth off to somebody I had no business shooting my mouth off to. This taught me to watch what you say to people and who you say it to.
- The birth of my two daughters.
Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?
Kevin Popović: Ideahaus! My company is my proudest professional accomplishment and it continues to be a source of adventure, personal inspiration and a platform to explore and help others.
Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?
Kevin Popović: I’ve had a couple of mentors. My father has been a good mentor to me as a professor of marketing. My grandmother has been a mentor to me. She sold shoes for 30 years. Michael Bosworth, sales legend and author of Solutions Selling, Customer Centric Selling and Story Leaders has been a mentor to me in the way that I approach sales and how I present myself, or professional opportunities.
Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?
Kevin Popović: Know what you are doing before you go into it.
Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?
Kevin Popović: Don’t believe your own bullshit. I select that word purposely. I find that a lot of entrepreneurs, and a lot of young people, particularly when they have some raw skills, and some raw talent, think very highly of themselves, and you need to have confidence, and then with some initial success and one or two people telling you that you did a great job, many of these people get inflated egos and start believing these things and let it distract them from learning and being better, and creating better opportunities. That’s what I think they should pay attention to.