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Excerpt
Please tell us about your moniker, is “Doc Williams” a nickname?
Doc William’s real name is De Kari. Ever since his school days, his name would be butchered because of how unique it is. Later on in his life, people around him started to call him Doc, hence the name Doc Williams.
You are the CEO and founder of Brand Factory Inc. We want to know about your entrepreneurial journey. Were you always entrepreneurial? When did you start Brand Factory? When did you start your first business?
Doc William’s parents were not entrepreneurial at all. They both had their jobs for 20 years, they love going to the same places, and they love routines. Doc was never like that in his life.
His entrepreneurial journey probably started when he was 7 or 8. As a child, he would sell candy and trading cards. One particular memory he brought up was that he was able to sell a first edition Pokemon card for a hundred dollars. At 12 years old, he already worked as a DJ at weddings and at some point in clubs! Doc worked as a DJ all the way until after college.
Doc’s entrepreneurial journey started very early on in his life. He also worked at least 50 jobs before he eventually got down and serious with his business.
The only reason why Doc had to keep switching jobs and businesses was because he wasn’t successful.
How did you come up with the concept of Brand Factory? How did you land on the idea of wanting to help companies find their brand and flagship products?
After Doc left healthcare, he wanted to open a gym because he was into Cross Fit at the time. He loved it. He used to compete in Kettlebell Sport. However, he was terrible at running a brick and mortar business. He soon burned out as he wasn’t really fit to run a business at the time.
The videographer who filmed Doc’s first commercial for his gym told him about the Arnold Sports Festival, a reality show by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Doc ended up on the show and took third place in the competition. That event was the opportunity of a lifetime because he was able to connect with some athletes with fairly good followings. Doc started to ghostwrite for them in order to build funnels.
A bunch of other people began to approach Doc and ask him to ghostwrite for them as well. This led to the realization that he was good at building up personal brands. He can do it just by listening to their voice, finding out what makes them unique, and what products people wanted to hear from them.
That’s when the idea of Brand Factory began to flourish.
He started out by working with athletes and entertainers. That meant there were a lot of egos that can be tiring. It’s hard to have an honest conversation with them, especially those that are used to people kissing up to them.
Doc mentioned all of this to his wife. He mentioned that he wanted to make brands for other people. What she said basically gave birth to their business. Doc’s wife said:
“Entrepreneurs go in, brands come out… Brand Factory.”
That’s when it was named and the rest was history.
How long has it been since you’ve founded Brand Factory?
It has been three years since Doc founded Brand Factory. Now, he has another company called Toolkit where he does the same thing but is laser-focused to work only with fitness entrepreneurs.
Doc also worked with Appsumo. This one started over six years ago, near the time when Doc began building digital businesses. During the time, he would take advantage of AppSumo deals to build and Frankenstein the businesses of his clients. Some of his clients would even ask him what deals he should buy from AppSumo.
Soon he wanted to work with them directly. Around the same time with Brand Factory, Noah Kagan, the founder and CEO of AppSumo was holding a charity bike ride. Doc used this opportunity to fly to him just so he can meet Noah and the rest of his team. Once they got connected there, Doc worked with AppSumo ever since.
