YES, BRAND with Hersh Rephun

Hersh Rephun
  • 5.0 (17)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

YES, BRAND features conversations with founders, creators, leaders, and public thinkers at pivotal moments, when the success of what they're building depends on how it's understood. A founder entering a new arena. An author introducing a new idea. A scientist challenging conventional thinking. A CEO redefining a company. An artist reshaping a genre. A leader building a movement. Building it is only the beginning. What happens next depends on how the world understands it. Every episode explores the gap between intention and interpretation, where meaningful ideas meet the real world and take on a life of their own. Welcome to the conversation between what you meant... and what everyone else thinks you meant. Because every idea has two stories: the one you tell... and the one everyone else repeats. Hosted by Hersh Rephun.

  1. 1d ago

    Ms. K. Derhem: Building The Sovereign Kingdom

    A note from Hersh: In interviewing so many fascinating entrepreneurs, many of whom are launching new ventures, we are selecting a handful of businesses to follow as they make their mark.The Sovereign Kingdom, founded by Ms. K. Derhem, is the first of these.Four more episodes with TSK will follow, featuring their partners and team as the story unfolds!So, let's begin at the beginning. The idea for The Sovereign Kingdom started with a locked door in Lima. K. Derhem had booked a stay through an alternative travel platform. Her host had warned her to be cautious traveling from the airport and to keep her luggage out of sight. K. followed the instructions, arrived at the property, rang the doorbell... And nobody answered. For hours. Standing there without access to the place she'd booked, K. found herself thinking: There has to be a better way. Pasted text That experience eventually became The Sovereign Kingdom, or TSK, an ambitious luxury ecosystem built around three founding principles: vision, grace and integrity. Pasted text On YES, BRAND, Hersh Rephun sits down with K. to explore what she's actually building and why she believes the opportunity extends well beyond luxury travel. They talk about a decision that runs against the instincts of many entrepreneurs: knowing when not to scale. K. believed TSK could have moved faster. But serving a clientele at the level she envisioned, with an offering she describes as averaging around $20,000 per night, required a degree of operational consistency she wasn't yet satisfied they could deliver. So rather than build a different version of the business simply because it could grow sooner, she waited. Pasted text They also explore privacy as luxury, how trust is earned when serving people who value discretion, and K.'s decision to build something that can ultimately become larger than her own personal brand. As she tells Hersh: “TSK is bigger than me.” Pasted text And then there's the name. For K., sovereignty isn't simply language that sounds luxurious. It represents the individual's ownership of their life, while the “kingdom” begins with the home as a place of safety, restoration and family. Those ideas come together in the company's larger ambition. Pasted text Property is the anchor. Service is the product. Sovereignty is the brand. This first conversation is an introduction to K., the thinking behind TSK, and the standards the company has set for itself. Now comes the interesting part: Watching what happens as they try to live up to them. Four more conversations to come. More: https://www.owntsk.com/ -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix. Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

    Ms. K. Derhem: Building The Sovereign Kingdom

  2. 6d ago

    Tim Klitch: How Do You Build a Brand People Want to Belong To?

    After 35 years in financial services, Tim Klitch could have retired. Instead, he became Chief Fun Officer of a pickleball ranch. On YES, BRAND, Hersh Rephun sits down with the founder of Austin Pickle Ranch to talk about second acts, community, and what happens when everything you learned about succeeding in one career doesn't necessarily prepare you for the next. Tim knew relationships. He knew finance. He knew how businesses worked. What he didn't know was how to build a modern consumer brand. Banking had taught him traditional advertising and customer acquisition. Austin Pickle Ranch taught him about social media, influencers, experience and the strange alchemy that happens when a good product and a good brand start reinforcing each other. In 2025, Tim says Austin Pickle Ranch spent roughly $15,000 on advertising while attracting an average of 60 new customers a day. But the Ranch isn't really selling court time. Tim grew up around his father's tennis club and remembered something that many modern sports facilities had lost: people didn't just show up, play and leave. They hung around. So Austin Pickle Ranch was intentionally designed around community. Even its first location, an inhospitable parking-garage rooftop, was transformed with turf, shade, furniture and commissioned art to feel less like a garage and more like a ranch in Central Texas. And before that first location even opened, Tim and his team had already created a brand book and decided what they wanted the place to stand for: Accessibility. Friendliness. Informality. Fun. Those weren't words for a wall. They became a filter for decisions: Is this consistent with the brand we created? Hersh and Tim talk about building community by design, why experience is made up of dozens of tiny decisions, what has to remain true as a business expands, and the unexpected humility of becoming a beginner again after an enormously successful first career. Because Tim went from running a bank with an operations department to being the guy whose phone rings at 2:30 in the morning when the fire alarm goes off. And he wouldn't trade it. He could charge more. Build something more exclusive. Perhaps even make more money. But then it wouldn't be the thing he wanted to build. Sometimes the strongest brand isn't the one engineered to extract the greatest possible value. It's the one the founder actually wants to live inside. https://austinpickleranch.com/ -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix. Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

    Tim Klitch: How Do You Build a Brand People Want to Belong To?

  3. Sep 14

    Cody Lee: What If People Don’t Understand What You’ve Built?

    Cody Lee has a problem plenty of founders would love to have. People want what he's built. They just don't always understand what it is at first. On YES, BRAND, Hersh Rephun sits down with Cody, co-founder and CEO of Food Truck Club, a marketplace connecting companies with vetted food trucks for corporate catering and events. The company has facilitated thousands of bookings, with Cody saying roughly 80% of them now come from corporate clients. But say “Food Truck Club” to someone who has never encountered the company and they may picture something very different. Maybe Cody owns a food truck. Maybe it's a gathering of food trucks. Maybe it's something you join. That's what Hersh calls the “explanation tax”: the work a founder has to do over and over because the audience doesn't yet have the right mental box for what they've built. Cody knows the underlying demand is real. His first crude Wix site generated a $7,000 catering job and a $17,000 catering job on its first day. His approach ever since has been decidedly unromantic: sell the thing before spending all your time building the thing. But as Food Truck Club expands into new markets, another challenge becomes even more important. Trust. Corporate customers need to trust that the trucks will show up and deliver. Food truck owners need to trust the marketplace bringing them business. And neither side automatically cares what Food Truck Club accomplished somewhere else. That trust has to be earned again in every new market. Hersh and Cody talk about why unfamiliar ideas require patience, why growth can amplify problems just as easily as success, why showing your flaws can actually build trust, and the difference between explaining something people haven't encountered before and trying to convince them to want something they don't. Because sometimes the market isn't rejecting your idea. It just hasn't figured out what it is yet. https://app.foodtruckclub.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/codyclee/ -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix. Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

    Cody Lee: What If People Don’t Understand What You’ve Built?

  4. Sep 10

    James I. Bond: Why Some Ideas Stick and Others Disappear

    You can have the better product, the smarter argument, even the better idea. And still be the one nobody remembers. On YES, BRAND, Hersh Rephun sits down with behavioral management specialist and Brain Glue author James I. Bond to explore one of branding's most important questions: Why do certain ideas stick in our heads while others vanish almost immediately? James has spent decades studying the psychology behind what makes language, names and ideas memorable. His fascination began after he lost a pitch for an anti-drug campaign. James had built the logical argument. The winning campaign showed an egg. “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.” James immediately understood that the other campaign had done something his hadn't: it made people feel the idea. That loss sent him down a decades-long rabbit hole into emotional selling and what he eventually identified as 14 “brain triggers.” Hersh and James tear through examples from advertising and popular culture: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Squatty Potty. Pop-Tarts. Gorilla Glue. The Hathaway Man. I Love Lucy. Even James's own name becomes evidence for the argument. Some are funny. Some are strange. Some sound almost too simple to have produced the results they did. But that's part of the point. A memorable brand doesn't merely describe something accurately. It gives the brain something to grab onto. Hersh brings the conversation back to something central to YES, BRAND: the bridge between the thing you're trying to communicate and the person you're trying to reach. Naming isn't magic, and it isn't entirely science. You're trying to understand what the audience will relate to, respond to and remember. Because clarity isn't terribly useful if nobody remembers it five minutes later. At its heart, this episode asks: What makes an idea impossible to forget? Websites: http://BrainGluePressKit.com/ https://usm-llc.com/ http://onlinesuccesshelpdesk.com/ https://cf.fasterbuyer.com/spd -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix. Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

    James I. Bond: Why Some Ideas Stick and Others Disappear

  5. Sep 3

    Zolal Habibi: When the Facts Aren’t Enough

    Facts can tell us what happened. They don't necessarily make us understand. Zolal Habibi has spent more than two decades advocating for democracy, women's rights, and freedom in Iran. For her, that work has never been abstract. Her father, a writer, was executed during Iran's 1988 massacre when Zolal was seven years old. She grew up knowing people who had lost parents, endured prison and torture, and paid extraordinary prices for resisting the Iranian regime. Today, she is an Iranian human rights advocate and member of the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee. But somewhere along the way, Zolal realized that simply presenting people with facts wasn't enough. A number like 100,000 people executed for the cause of freedom could remain just that: a number. Zolal knew the faces. She knew the stories. And she began to understand that part of her responsibility was becoming a bridge between those experiences and people thousands of miles away. That realization becomes the starting point for a remarkably timely conversation with Hersh Rephun about truth, perception, storytelling, advocacy, resistance, and hope. Zolal offers her perspective on Iran's current political landscape, the country's long history of resistance, the consequences of foreign intervention, and what she believes is too often missing from international discussions about war, diplomacy, nuclear weapons, sanctions, and regime change: The Iranian people themselves. As she points out, negotiations can focus on nuclear programs, terrorism and regional influence while barely acknowledging executions, suppression, or the people whose lives are actually at stake. Hersh and Zolal also wrestle with a larger question that reaches well beyond Iran. What happens when enormously complicated human realities get compressed into headlines, political positions, statistics, and competing narratives? And what responsibility comes with having a voice when others cannot safely use theirs? For Zolal, hope isn't passive optimism. It requires participation. At its heart, this episode asks: How do you make people care about a truth they may already know, but have never really felt? linkedin.com/in/zolalhabibi ncr-iran.org https://oiac.org/ -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix. Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

    Zolal Habibi: When the Facts Aren’t Enough

  6. Aug 27

    What Will You Give Me for This Expertise? with Karen Howard

    People will spend thousands of dollars on a piece of jewelry, then balk at paying an expert to tell them what they actually bought. Karen Howard has always found that fascinating. On this episode of YES, BRAND, Hersh Rephun sits down with veteran gemologist, former appraisal business owner, and Jewelry Appraisers Coach founder Karen Howard for a conversation about expertise, value, trust, mentorship, and what happens when decades of experience become something worth passing on. Jewelry appraisal turns out to be considerably more complicated than looking through a loupe and declaring something shiny. An appraiser has to understand gemology, grading, scientific valuation, construction, markets, history, ethics, technology, and sometimes enough research to defend an opinion in court. Karen and Hersh explore the difference between evaluation and valuation, why lab-grown diamonds have complicated the market, how technology is changing the profession, and why the story attached to a piece of jewelry can matter almost as much as the number attached to it. That last point became part of Karen's own practice. Her personal wedding-ring appraisal includes the story of the ring so her children, and someday their children, will know where it came from. She began offering clients the same opportunity. But the bigger story is Karen's own transition. After more than two decades running an appraisal business, a personal crisis forced her to reconsider what she wanted to do next. She kept remembering former students asking for help with all the things their technical training hadn't prepared them for: clients, ethics, business decisions, and simply surviving that difficult first year. So she built the resource she wished existed. Karen is now coaching new jewelry appraisers and has completed her first book, From Startup to Success: A Practical Guide for Jewelry Appraising, currently in editing. Along the way, Hersh and Karen explore something that applies far beyond jewelry: When the thing you're selling is accumulated knowledge, experience, and judgment, discounting it changes what people believe it's worth. At its heart, this episode asks: What happens when you've spent decades becoming an expert and realize your most valuable work may be teaching someone else what took you years to learn? “From Challenges to Unstoppable: Your roadmap to Professional Success in Jewellery Appraising" Freebie URL: https://zpr.io/UDZw3nC6bJrZ “The Art of Work-Life Balance" https://docs.google.com/document/d/196wzpW54Uq2nT6PafgCNTjxi-D9x_5kz/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116369053099329677903&rtpof=true&sd=trueCall Booking URL: https://zpr.io/rSijC9AarKM6 -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix. Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

    What Will You Give Me for This Expertise? with Karen Howard

  7. Aug 20

    Ben Butcher: After Pixar and Funko, Building a World of His Own

    Ben Butcher spent nearly three decades helping shape some of the most recognizable entertainment brands in the world, including five years at Disney, twelve at Pixar, and ten as SVP of Creative at Funko. Then he decided to build something of his own. On this episode of YES, BRAND, Hersh Rephun sits down with Ben, founder and CEO of Kaleidos Creative, an artist-led company creating original characters, stories, and intellectual property from the ground up. The challenge is radically different. At Disney, Pixar, and Funko, the audience already existed. The characters already carried meaning. At Kaleidos, Ben and his team have to create that connection before anyone knows what the characters are supposed to mean. Hersh and Ben explore how beloved brands can eventually become trapped by their own history, why creative freedom still has to coexist with commercial reality, and what changes when an artist moves from contributing to someone else’s world to becoming responsible for the whole thing. They also get into AI, and Ben offers a refreshingly human reason Kaleidos has chosen not to build its creative process around it: the messy middle is the part they actually love. The mistakes, experimentation, collaboration, and evolution are not inefficiencies to eliminate. They are the creative experience itself. At its heart, this episode asks: What happens when someone who spent decades building other people’s worlds finally decides to create one of his own? https://kaleidoscreative.com/ -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix. Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

    Ben Butcher: After Pixar and Funko, Building a World of His Own

  8. Aug 11

    T.A. Thompson: When the Category Is Too Small

    What happens when the life that pays the bills is only part of who you are? On this episode of YES, BRAND, Hersh Rephun sits down with author T.A. Thompson, who has spent more than a decade in commercial insurance while building a very different creative life as a fiction writer. His novel, The Mark, lives in a post-apocalyptic world where people die by 22 and the protagonist, Alexandra, has somehow made it to 25. Which means everyone sees her as old. That premise opens the door to something bigger than dystopian fiction. Hersh and T.A. explore what happens when a label helps people understand what you do, but also compresses what makes it different. They get into the difficulty of becoming known for a new identity, why writing the book may be easier than helping people discover it, how rejection changes the way a creator sees the work, and why dark humor can make the truth easier to face. They also explore the tension between being an insurance professional who writes and becoming an author who happens to work in insurance. At the center of the conversation is a question that applies far beyond publishing: How do you help people understand what you’ve created without reducing it to the nearest familiar category? https://tathompsonwriter.com/ -- Hersh's new book, SELLING THE TRUTH: A ‘Semoir’ with Insights for Life & Business is a semi memoir drawing on his adventures as an Authority Advisor and Standup Comedian. It is part business book, part happiness formula for life, and an amuseful read, whether you’re building a business or burnishing your self-image. You can kickstart your own messaging evolution with a one-on-one 5-Minute Fix. Take the 60-second Get Off Your Assets Quiz, and find other resources here: https://www.hershrephun.com/selling-the-truth/

    T.A. Thompson: When the Category Is Too Small
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5
out of 5
17 Ratings

About

YES, BRAND features conversations with founders, creators, leaders, and public thinkers at pivotal moments, when the success of what they're building depends on how it's understood. A founder entering a new arena. An author introducing a new idea. A scientist challenging conventional thinking. A CEO redefining a company. An artist reshaping a genre. A leader building a movement. Building it is only the beginning. What happens next depends on how the world understands it. Every episode explores the gap between intention and interpretation, where meaningful ideas meet the real world and take on a life of their own. Welcome to the conversation between what you meant... and what everyone else thinks you meant. Because every idea has two stories: the one you tell... and the one everyone else repeats. Hosted by Hersh Rephun.

Information

  • Creator
    Hersh Rephun
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    183
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 YES, BRAND with Hersh Rephun
  • Show Website
    YES, BRAND with Hersh Rephun