YES, BRAND with Hersh Rephun

A father invents technology that helps change an industry.

Decades later, his son builds a consumer brand around it.

On this episode of YES, BRAND, Hersh Rephun welcomes Mark Mitchnick and his son, Malachy Mitchnick, the father-son team behind Burnd, a science-driven skincare brand.

Mark spent decades in scientific innovation, including developing transparent zinc oxide technology that helped transform modern sun protection.

Malachy, a surfer and entrepreneur whose mother had melanoma, saw an opportunity to turn that expertise into something people would actually want to use.

There's just one problem.

Great science doesn't automatically make a great consumer brand.

People need to understand the product, believe in the people behind it, and trust that it will deliver. Preferably without needing a chemistry degree.

Hersh explores how father and son approach that challenge from different directions. Mark brings decades of scientific expertise and experience building and selling companies. Malachy brings entrepreneurial energy, consumer instincts and an understanding of how to make complicated ideas accessible.

They even conduct a little experiment during the conversation: Malachy explains the sunscreen from the consumer's perspective, then Mark explains the science behind it.

The difference is revealing.

Along the way, they get into family businesses, the difference between credibility and attention, why trying to sell to everyone can weaken a brand, and how trust becomes more valuable than any individual product.

They also tackle a generational question: Is it better to explore a dozen opportunities or spend decades becoming extraordinarily good at one thing?

And Mark shares a remarkable Thanksgiving story about selling his first company, an extremely wealthy investor who wanted him to hold out for more, and the difference between financial success and knowing when you've won.

At its heart, this conversation is about something every founder eventually confronts:

You can spend a lifetime becoming great at something. But how do you help the world understand why it matters?

YES, BRAND with Mark and Malachy Mitchnick

Explore Burnd: https://getburnd.com/

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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/

This is not a conventional episode of YES, BRAND.

It’s an experiment inspired by First Contact Live, Hersh Rephun’s weekly event where one participant takes the hot seat, shares what they’re building, and hears from the gallery about what they actually think they’re seeing.

Because what we intend to communicate and what other people receive aren’t always the same thing.

This time, there’s no gallery.

Instead, entrepreneur and business strategist Estie Starr brings Hersh and Sales with Soul psychologist Nancy Zare a real, unresolved business problem.

Her new 100K Club is designed to help small business owners reach their next $100K breakthrough through training, accountability, community, networking and a business system Estie has refined over 17 years.

People are showing up.

They seem interested.

The price is accessible.

They’re just not buying at the rate Estie thinks they should.

So Estie takes the hot seat.

Hersh looks at the problem through the First Contact lens:

What does Estie think she's communicating, and what are people actually seeing?

Nancy, creator of the AlikeAbility System and Sales With Soul, comes at it from the buyer:

Who is this person, what matters to them, and what actually moves them toward a decision?

Almost immediately, cracks appear.

“Accelerator” suggests speed.

“Reliable, stable income” suggests something deliberate and sustained.

The $97 monthly price makes the offer extraordinarily accessible, but might also be changing what people think they're buying.

And the sheer abundance of value may actually be making the offer harder to understand.

Then the conversation goes somewhere none of them quite expected.

The problem may not simply be the 100K Club.

The person building it may have changed.

Estie has spent much of her career speaking to the driven entrepreneur. Move. Build. Execute. Get results.

But as Nancy digs into the person Estie seems to want in the Club now, another quality keeps appearing:

Care.

Estie doesn't simply want people to buy her system. She wants to create a place where business owners can get the information, community and support they need without getting taken advantage of.

And suddenly Estie has to ask herself:

Have I changed enough that my ideal client has changed too?

That wasn't the question anyone came in expecting to answer.

Which is exactly what First Contact Live is designed to uncover.

Sometimes the thing you think you're communicating isn't what other people are receiving.

And sometimes what they see reveals something you haven't quite seen yet.

This isn't a case study after everything worked.

It's a business while it's being figured out.

Welcome to First Contact, YES, BRAND style.

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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/

At 36, Saahil Mehta had done what he was supposed to do.

The education. The career. The money. The business. The family. The lifestyle. No debt.

He'd checked the boxes his 20-year-old self believed would make him successful.

There was just one problem.

He wasn't particularly happy.

On YES, BRAND, Hersh Rephun talks with entrepreneur, author, speaker and leadership coach Saahil Mehta about what happens when you successfully build a life around a definition of success that was never really yours.

For Saahil, the realization came after a retreat with fellow entrepreneurs built around two words: “no judgment.”

For four days, he says he didn't have to pretend. On the flight home, he found himself crying as he tried to reconcile the man he'd just experienced with the one he was returning home to be. Pasted text

So Saahil started removing what he calls the “clutter” from his backpack: expectations, behaviors and obligations he'd been carrying without asking whether they still belonged there.

He became lighter.

He changed quickly.

And eventually his wife told him:

“I don't recognize you anymore.” Pasted text

That's where the conversation takes a very YES, BRAND turn.

Because changing isn't necessarily enough.

The people around you have built their own understanding of who you are. If you evolve without bringing them along, they may continue responding to a version of you that no longer exists.

Saahil discovered this in his marriage. Hersh sees it constantly with founders, leaders and brands.

People need evidence of the journey.

Saahil and Hersh talk about inherited definitions of success, people pleasing, relationships, communication, personal evolution and the danger of assuming other people understand what's happening simply because it's perfectly clear to you.

They also get into Saahil's life as a mountaineer and one spectacularly bad decision involving a 20,000-foot mountain, a requested helicopter and five terrified families.

Today, Saahil describes success differently. Rather than climbing one mountain at the expense of everything else, he thinks in terms of his “inner seven summits”, including health, wealth and relationships, and asks what a yes in one part of his life will cost the others. Pasted text

Because success isn't simply something you achieve.

You have to decide what it means before achieving it can mean very much at all.

Saahil has also created a Success Audit specifically for YES, BRAND listeners, along with an offer to personally work through the results with the first five people who respond:

podcast.saahilmehta.com/brand

FREE GIFT & OFFER link:

https://podcast.saahilmehta.com/brand

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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/

A note from Hersh:

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/

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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/

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/

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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 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/

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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/

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

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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/

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/

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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/

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=true
• Call Booking URL: https://zpr.io/rSijC9AarKM6

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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 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/

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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/