Brandon Fears on Thumbs-Up Civics, vTaiwan, and the 'Compelling Market Edge'

In an episode of The Building Texas Show, Why Every City Sounds the Same - And How to Stand Out, host Justin McKenzie sits down in Cypress, Texas with Brandon Fears, Founder and Managing Partner of Gracchus Partners and Chief Growth Officer of idhubs, to talk about how a city or a company can stand out when every pitch starts to sound the same. This Season 4 premiere, Episode 200 of the show, is also on YouTube.

Fears describes vTaiwan, a civic process used during Taiwan's debate over Uber, in which a person could post a comment and everyone else could only vote thumbs up or thumbs down, rather than pile on in a reply thread. He tells McKenzie that structure takes heat out of public input. "City manager meetings usually become who's yelling the loudest," Fears says. Drawing on that model, and on his work with idhubs, he asks what would change if city councils put software in place so residents could post comments, vote them up or down, and see which concerns were trending, including how to improve the local economic environment for businesses.

The second half of the episode turns to why so many city and company pitches blur together. Fears points to Theodore Levitt's 1960 Harvard Business Review essay "Marketing Myopia" and to his own idea of a "compelling market edge." He defines that edge as "what's going to make you unique in the marketplace that no other competitor can talk about," together with "what is going to compel a person to buy."

"Every city almost sounds the same," Fears says. "Well, why do you want to move here? Well, we have great schools, we have good public works, we have great parks, it's family-centric. Everybody sounds the same, but they're not." When he asks McKenzie what is unique about San Marcos, they land on Texas State University. Fears offers Prairie View A&M University as another example of a place with a distinct through line, one he associates with perseverance, and says that is what leaders need to lean into.

The same problem shows up in sales conversations, he says. In due diligence work, he will ask four salespeople at one company what business they are in and get four different answers. "I'll tell people, your company is four different companies," Fears says. He also recounts a recent conversation in which an operator treated his toughest competitor as proprietary information, then realized "his best competitor was the customer unwilling to change."

Fears tells McKenzie it has never been a better time, or a harder time, to be a small or midsize business, with more tools to compete and also inflation, regulation and larger rivals. The number one problem he sees is owners putting too much money into promotion that is not working, or not promoting at all. His advice is to record on YouTube, slice the same material for Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, consider a cost-effective editor, and not neglect good audio.

Fears invites listeners to visit gracchuspartners.com, which he spells out on the episode, and says a link there lets people book time with him. Watch and listen: the full episode is on The Building Texas Show episode page and on YouTube.

About The Building Texas Show

The Building Texas Show, hosted by Justin McKenzie, tells the stories of the founders, community leaders and projects shaping Texas, from economic development and small business to conservation and education. New episodes publish weekly on YouTube and all major podcast platforms, with highlights on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at @thebuildingtexasshow. Watch, listen and subscribe at www.buildingtexasshow.com and https://www.youtube.com/@thebuildingtexasshow.