Entrepreneurship

Meet Lewis Fausett – The Superstar Operations and Marketing Consultant

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Lewis Fausett for an interview. Lewis is a business manager and consultant and has had massive success in only a short period of time. We talk about how he got started, what he’s done differently, and more.

Hey Lewis, who are you and what do you do?

I’m Lewis Fausett, and I’m a business manager for Patrick Adair from Patrick Adair Designs. I am also a business consultant for a handful of other influencers. I spend most of my time making sure people are making the correct decisions to optimize growth not just of their brands but their businesses behind the brands. This means I spend a lot of time overseeing marketing and operations on top of the traditional things like advising on contracts and big deals.

What have you done differently to scale your business?

The biggest thing is being able to blend the traditional world of business with the more personal aspects of being an influencer. Most influencers are focused on just creating amazing content and putting minimal effort into creating the brands and businesses behind the scenes. I spend the majority of my time implementing more traditional marketing aspects and operational flows into influencer based businesses while still letting the influencer be themselves.

Good examples of this occur with Patrick Adair Designs. We often have to blend Patrick’s love of traditional YouTube culture and memes with the fact that his biggest brand is selling luxury jewelry as a designer. This means we have to connect with multiple demographics. Your consumer who frequents Saks Fifth Avenue (this would be a more traditional demographic) is very different from a 25-year-old watching a video because it involves PewDiePie.

The other big blend we do involves including more traditional marketing. You’re seeing this more and more with larger influencers, but the middle tier still leaves this untapped. Incorporating things like paid strategies and lead capturing and nurturing strategies also has really helped. The key is you have to do this all very carefully to ensure that you aren’t alienating your core organic viewers.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned along your journey?

I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that connecting with an audience is the most important thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to get views on a video, promote a song, or sell a product. If you can get an audience to connect and trust you, you can get away with sucking at every aspect of traditional marketing. Then if you’re able to do those well you get to a point where you are almost invincible in your respective industries.

What are your three core principles?

Winning is a culture

This was a phrase that got thrown around a lot while I was playing rugby at the University of Utah. You don’t win games against top teams by just showing up on Saturday night. You have to hit the weight room all week, be attentive in practice, and taking care of all your off the field responsibilities. This translates directly to being successful in life and business. If you just strive for excellence in everything, it’s much easier to strive for excellence at work.

Innovate or die

You’re never going to be able to do the same thing forever and be successful. You’re only going to have a limited amount of success before people start trying to copy your formula. At that point you need to already be figuring out the next step, so you’re always a step ahead. We see this a lot with competitors trying to rip off designs and naming schemes for jewelry.

3. Outwork Everyone

This is another one that came from sports that I think laid the foundation for success in business. At the end of the junior year of high school rugby, I was a solid second-string player on a fairly bad team in a really good conference. My coach sat me down and told me that because I had really good grades, test scores, and measurables (height, weight, etc.) a lot of ivy league programs he was connected to were interested in me, but they’d need to see me play at a high level first. One of those coaches was the coach for the collegiate all American program. He sent me an email with a weight program and recommendations for conditioning and diets. Between his advice and one on one skill work by showing up to practice early and staying late with my coaching staff, I finished my senior season as an all-conference player. I actually didn’t get into any of the ivy league schools, but in the process, I got to the point where I was recruited to play for the University of Utah which at the time was ranked in the top 10 teams in collegiate rugby. That experience cemented that if your willing to outwork everyone you can do almost anything.

When I started working, I took that same idea into it. There were plenty of days where I’d work 18 hours and sleep on the couch at work to make sure I was there when the day started again.

What advice would you give to someone looking to become an entrepreneur?

I think I’d give the advice that you need to develop a skill set that’s valuable. I mean I think being an entrepreneur can be a little silly if you have no product or ideas, but if you have a high-value skill set, you can always be an entrepreneur. It can be sales, social media, marketing, design, etc, but if you can do something that most people can’t, then you just have to sell yourself.

That’s why I’m not necessarily pro college or anti college. You definitely need a valuable skill set, and I think you can learn one in college. The networking is also good. At the same time, you can go learn something on your own and practice it. I mean you could even just learn business operations by mowing lawns and trying to scale a landscaping business. The biggest thing is to just start trying to create a valuable skill set that will help you in the future.