Part 3: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories & The Ultimate Guide To Facebook Advertising

Part 3, of our seven-part interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

Topics covered in this episode

How a Meeting at Facebook Headquarters led to the beginning of Feedstories
The Power of Your Businesses Story
Navigating through COVID-19
How COVID-19 led to an increase in demand for video content

Transcription

Intro Brian: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part 3.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today’s part three of our series with Bob Regnerus. I hope you’ve been watching, if not go back and watch the rest of them.

If you’d like to be on this podcast as in a conversation with me, or if you’d like to have me on your podcast or speak at your event, go check out BrianJPombo.com, for all the details.

So here is part 3.

Brian: What do you think that most businesses can learn from that, in terms of you mentioned having cash on hand. What are the other things that you think that made the biggest difference for you that you think other people could learn from?

Bob: Well, for me, it was investing in things that have the ability to be flexible.

So team members that are flexible with multiple skill sets technology, like we were perfectly positioned to be remote.

In fact, our company’s been remote for years, we were on zoom before zoom was cool, we had used it. So essentially, that didn’t change.

We also had this enthusiasm for what could be, but we also had a sense of what could go wrong?

Now, the reason we’re able to do that is we’re in a mastermind with Perry. And as you know, Perry’s my friend, he’s a client, we do business together, but I also pay him for mentorship, because he’s so wise.

And we went through an exercise, January of 2019, which is like, what could go wrong in your business this year?

Now, nobody predicted COVID, but we had some scenarios like, okay, you know, if our technology failed, or we went through probably five or six scenarios, it got us thinking.

Even then, like, what would happen if?

We weren’t shocked when COVID happened. We certainly had this sense of dread like everybody else. But we had been exercising our what if muscles and had in mind, like, everything’s not going to be rosy. So we’re mentally prepared for what happened.

And I was really proud of kind of how we just, we didn’t panic, we had some really thoughtful consideration of how we’re going to move forward. And we positioned ourselves well, we were prepared for some worst case scenarios.

I think that’s one thing as entrepreneurs, we’re always thinking like, the best is going to happen. And I love that part of being an entrepreneur, every project we get involved in, we think this is gonna be great.

We haven’t unbridled enthusiasm for it, and you have to, but you also have that sense of, okay, what if this doesn’t work out?

Or what if this idea doesn’t pan out?

You want to have contingencies, you want to have plans in place. Maybe that comes from my upbringing, maybe it comes from experience, I don’t know.

But it just seems like the right way to approach things. Or you don’t kind of have rosy blinders on and you’re oblivious to the fact that we live on an imperfect planet, you know what I mean?

Brian: Absolutely. Boy, that’s great stuff.

You touched briefly your company Feedstories, why don’t you tell us more about what that is and how it came about.

Bob: So that’s interesting, that period between like 2010 and 2013, I was doing a lot of things to kind of find my way again. After you kind of lose an agency, you know, I was just kind of freelancing.

I hosted a radio show for a number of years, doing kind of what you and I are doing right now, which is great, got to meet a lot of new people help other people write books.

But 2013, I got heavily involved in Facebook.

Facebook started to become a media that advertisers could take seriously.

I got my first five clients and one of them just went into the stratosphere. It was a clothing brand. In fact, it was a headband company and it just took off.

One of the best things I did with that client early on was I said, you’ve got a headband, you know, it’s a $15 headband. I said, anyone can knock this off, but they can’t knock off your story.

I said, we’re gonna build your whole advertising and your whole kind of foundation based on your story. And your story is what’s going to sell the headbands.

And I was right.

I was really glad I was right. But I knew kinda internally that would be that way. This business called Bolder Brands Headbands, they won Shopify retailer of the Year in 2014. Driven by Facebook sales, like 99% of their sales came from Facebook.

Facebook, recognize that and said, Hey, Bob, we’re having this meeting with some other big brands want you to come in, we’re going to kind of brainstorm. I had a chance over a number of years to meet with Facebook.

But in 2016, in particular, I went to this meeting and all they talked about was video, Facebook said we’re a video company now Instagram, who’s owned by Facebook says we’re a video company now.

I’m like, okay, this is my like, I’m looking ahead toward the future.

And I went outside of the meeting was in the sidewalk outside of Facebook headquarters in Austin, Texas. I called Brandon, who’s my business partner for Feedstories.

Brian is a creative guy, he’s a copywriter, he’s a video graphic guy.

I said, we really need to be prepared for this because Facebook and Instagram are changing who they are. And video is going to be like the thing that they are emphasizing the most.

We started that company, literally a conversation over the phone, came into the same city kind of put this thing together and started Feedstories in late 2016.

And we kind of felt for years, we were ahead of the curve. We did a lot of video for companies but it wasn’t kind of people’s number one concern, COVID was really the catalyst for us where people were like, suddenly realized how important video was.

But we’ve prepared for that.

That’s how Feedstories was formed. It was literally what I heard Facebook and Instagram telling me that they were going to prioritize.

And so if I’m going to continue to be a really good Facebook advertiser, I need to have really good video creative. And why not create a company that produces the creative that I know is going to work in the Facebook ad. That’s how that company was born.

And we’re going strong here in 2021 so far.

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