Brand3 Conversations with Matt Wolfe and Bill Hueter
Serial entrepreneur, EOS Implementer, and business coach, Bill Hueter has founded three companies — one of which earned a spot on the Inc. 5000 nine years in a row and culminated in a successful private equity exit. He helps leadership teams get clear, get aligned, and get results through a people-first philosophy grounded in integrity and transparency.
Transcript edited and abbreviated; for more of the conversation, watch/listen to the recording below.
Culture is one of the most talked-about — and most avoided — topics in business. In this conversation, Brand3's Matt Wolfe sits down with serial entrepreneur and EOS Implementer Bill Hueter to explore what it really takes to build a culture that lasts, where brand strategy and operational frameworks intersect, and the uncomfortable work required to build something truly great.
Matt Wolfe
We know that brand can help build a positive workplace culture, but culture tends to get overlooked. Why is that?
Bill Hueter
Culture is misunderstood, and those who do understand it know that it's inextricably linked to People — and People is the number one hardest issue any leader faces. So many companies will speak in culture terms but will not act in culture terms.
Everything I do is rooted in what I call right people, right seats. Right people are those who live the company's core values. Right seats are those who get, want, and have the capacity to do their job. You need both. And when someone doesn't meet that standard, it's our obligation as leaders to mentor them, coach them, do everything we can to get them there. But speaking plainly — there are people who simply don't meet the minimums. And for the greater good of the company, and for their own future, you have to liberate them.
Matt Wolfe
Why do you think people avoid that work? Everything you're describing sounds right — so why don't more leaders follow through?
Bill Hueter
Because what if the person isn't right person or right seat? Then you have to confront it. If someone is the right person — they live the core values — but they're in the wrong seat, maybe there's another seat where they'd thrive. You explore that first. But if there isn't, for their greater good and the company's, you have to let them go. Who wants to do that?
And the flip side is just as hard. Wrong person, right seat: a salesperson who hits their numbers and is respected for it, but doesn't live the core values. You can't fix wrong person by moving them to a different seat. If someone is not living the core values, they're not an asset — they're a cancer in your culture. This is serious business. It is the number one thing all leaders, owners, and managers want to avoid like the plague — and that avoidance is what keeps cultures stuck.
Matt Wolfe
There's a real parallel in the brand strategy work we do. When you're figuring out who you are and who your ideal client is, it can surface uncomfortable things — maybe the company isn't focused on the right things, and that's hard to admit. It also creates anxiety around narrowing your focus, because you're letting go of something in order to move forward and grow stronger. I see a lot of overlap in what we both do. We're both building foundations that help companies grow — you through the operating system, us through brand strategy, which I describe simply as telling the right story to the right people. How do you see the connection between EOS and brand strategy?
Bill Hueter
Brand strategy fits directly into EOS through what we call the Vision/Traction Organizer — eight questions that help you form and execute your vision. One is your marketing strategy: who are you talking to, and what are you saying to them?
Who you're talking to is the intersection of your target demographic, geographic, and psychographic. What you're saying is built around three elements: your Three Uniques, your Proven Process, and your Guarantee.
I use a simple illustration for the Three Uniques. Imagine everyone in your market is lined up against a wall. A voice asks, "Do you have or do X?" Half the line steps forward. Then Y — a handful remain. Then Z — and you're the only one still standing. Those three things in combination are what make your company uniquely yours. That is one of the most powerful things you can project to the world.
The Proven Process paints the picture — simply, visually — of how you take someone from skeptical prospect to long-time satisfied client. And a Guarantee is a pledge with a consequence. Put it all together — target market by demo, geo, and psychographic, plus the Three Uniques, the Proven Process, and the Guarantee — and that's how the tools of EOS align with what you're talking about.
Matt Wolfe
I love that illustration. It's so clear. It actually reminds me of my background — I was an actor before I was a marketer, and every audition felt like a total crapshoot. You'd walk in hoping that somehow you were what the director envisioned, and there was no way to know. I've never thought about this analogy before, but so many businesses operate that same way — throwing something out into the world and hoping it connects with someone. But in marketing, we actually have the power to tell a story we know will resonate with the right client. It sounds so simple. And yet so many people don't realize they can have that kind of clarity.
Bill Hueter
That's the simple brilliance of EOS and of Gino Wickman, who built this system over 20 years ago — the ability to break everything down to its simplest parts. Marketing strategy is that simple. You could spend months every year dissecting it, but this elegant framework gives a leadership team — and eventually the whole company — the clarity to understand what the company is, where it's going, and what matters most to clients.
And here's something I always encourage: do you want less friction in doing business with your clients? Pick clients who share your core values. So much of the tension between a company and its clients just goes away when values are aligned. When I meet a potential client, I tell them my five core values upfront — be humbly confident, grow or die, help first, do the right thing, and I do what I say. I want to know early if those values are shared. And to get there, both sides have to be open, honest, and vulnerable.
Matt Wolfe
I appreciate that about EOS — the name sounds almost clinical, but when you encounter it there's so much care for the human element. What do you think happens when a company has either the operational framework or the story, but not both — when they only have one piece of what we each bring?
Bill Hueter
There are companies with a compelling story — they were founded with purpose and have gotten somewhere real. But without a system, you will only go so far. This is as true as gravity. You can roll your own framework and get partial results, but you need a set of tools with interlocking connective tissue — something that can take the company from where it is to where it wants to go, whether that's revenue growth, a stronger culture, better-documented processes, or simply serving clients better.
A great origin story is good. But to write the next chapter — a chapter of greater success — you need a system. EOS is one example of that system.
Matt Wolfe
And from the brand side, we see the same gap. Companies with a solid operating framework that haven't translated any of it into how they show up externally. The core values aren't on the website. The differentiators aren't in the messaging. The story isn't being told. What do you see happen on your end when that translation doesn't happen?
Bill Hueter
It's heartbreaking. I spend two days in vision building with a leadership team. We nail the core values, core focus, marketing strategy, three-year picture, one-year plan. Everyone is aligned and excited. Then I come back for the next quarterly session and they've left it all behind. They forgot they did the work.
Your core values need to be on your website — front and center. At the top of every job description, because what matters first isn't whether someone can do the job; it's whether they live the values. Core values need to be in every piece of marketing, every speech, every client conversation. You've got to preach it and evangelize it everywhere. If you don't, you're not transmitting a brand — even though you've already done the work to have one.
Matt Wolfe
That connects directly to what we do with messaging frameworks. As a StoryBrand certified consultant, a big part of what I bring is building a framework around those critical elements — what makes a company unique, how they do what they do, the heart behind the business, what they promise clients. But the big flip StoryBrand makes is inviting the other person into the story — making the client the main character. That invitation, that empathy, makes people far more willing to hear about your core values and what makes you different. Brand strategy is really about alignment and connection, but it's also about invitation.
Bill Hueter
And stories are how all of it lands. If you want your core values to stick, don't just list them — tell a short story about each one. Three sentences. People won't necessarily remember "be humbly confident," but they'll remember a story about it. And the most powerful stories aren't always positive. Sometimes the anti-story — a time you fell short of a value — lands hardest, because it's honest and it's human.
Stories work because they operate at the crocodile-brain level of all of us as social animals. You can apply that to core values, core focus, and marketing strategy alike. It's the vehicle that carries everything else.
Matt Wolfe
Story really is our native language — not facts, not frameworks. My dad was a pastor, and I learned early that what people remember from any sermon, whether it's 15 minutes or 45, are the stories and illustrations, because they got to step inside them with the main character. And the only flip in StoryBrand is that the person you're talking to becomes that main character. So many businesses are still trying to be the hero of their own story when it's far more powerful to cast the client there instead.
Matt Wolfe
Let's dig deeper into culture-building once the foundation is in place. Once you have the right people in the right seats, how important is it that everyone — not just leadership — can actually articulate the brand's story and the things you've built into the culture?
Bill Hueter
It's everything. Think of the leadership team as the tractor and the rest of the company as the trailer. I've got the leadership team working in the system — accelerator to the floor. But if the other seven, fifty, or five hundred people haven't been taught the system, haven't bought into it, they're in that trailer with the brakes locked. It doesn't matter how hard you push. The drag is incredible.
Everyone has to see the same vision. Every person in the company, every week, should have at least one measurable scorecard number and one quarterly goal. They should be in a meeting where they're surfacing and helping solve real issues together. When you have that — and everyone is living the core values — people start to believe. And it scales, whether it's 10 people or 10,000.
Matt Wolfe
You've shared that EOS changed your own experience as a leader — going from feeling crushed and carrying a lonely burden to feeling genuinely supported by a team. That's a significant shift. How much of building a healthy culture is about changing the story that leaders tell themselves about their role in the company?
Bill Hueter
Three things: you have to know the story, believe the story, and communicate the story. But even before that — you have to get out from under imposter syndrome. Too many leaders are quietly telling themselves they're not smart enough, experienced enough, credentialed enough compared to the people around them. You will not succeed carrying that weight. You have to believe you're good enough before you can lead anyone else to believe anything.
Once you clear that hurdle, the work is to know the company's story fully — its core values, its core focus, what makes it unique — and to have a real story for each of those elements. What does the company do, and why? The "what" is factual; the "why" is where the emotion lives. If you're not emotionally bought in to why the company does what it does, it doesn't matter what else you know. You're not living the culture.
When you preach it — and I mean that in the best possible way — and your people believe it, they'll carry it to new hires, to clients, to vendors, to that fence conversation with a neighbor on Saturday. That is what drives a great culture and a great brand.
Matt Wolfe
Thank you for the transparency in that. I don't think you're alone in having been the kind of leader who was singularly focused on results — on getting great work done and having it all come together. I wish more leaders would arrive at the understanding you've reached. I love that in this conversation we're treating things most people call intangible — belief, emotion, story — as genuine elements of power in building a company.
Bill Hueter
I'll be open and honest and vulnerable: when I started out, I valued culture and core values but didn't put them first. What I put first was getting things done. I wanted great work from everyone, and I wanted it all to produce a great result. I saw core values and culture as important — but not something I needed to actively focus on.
Eventually, I came to understand that what binds us together isn't the goals or the results or the residual great feeling of hitting a number. It's what we have in common in our hearts. When I got that — right around the time we implemented EOS in my second company — it changed everything. That's why I never stop preaching right people, right seats. When you're 100% there, everything is possible. When you're at 50%, you're living in a world of hurt.
Matt Wolfe
There's a moment I love in our discovery process. We pick up where you leave off — going deeper, wrapping more story around the foundation that's been built. And then we get to read the story back to the client. They hear the narrative of who they serve, why it matters, the unique difference they make, and the outcomes that come from it. A lot of times they'll sit quietly for a moment and say, "Wow, that's pretty good." And I always turn it back to them: that's you. That's your 20 or 30 years of blood, sweat, tears, and time away from family. We're just the strategists — the editors of someone else's story.
Bill Hueter
You're more than that. You're the archaeologist who did the digging to find everything they need to be reminded of — the things that define who the company is and get buried under the day-to-day. That's what you uncover.
Matt Wolfe
That's a genuinely beautiful way to look at it. And it's true in both of our work — our clients simply don't get to have these conversations day-to-day. There's no time and it's hard to justify. So they forget some of the wonderful things about who they are, and the reasons they started the business to begin with. Where do you find the story when you're just getting started with a new client?
Bill Hueter
If you want to know a company's story, start with the founder. Get them one-on-one. Ask more questions than you make statements. Get them open, honest, and comfortable — and stories will just start to come out. The archaeology begins there.
Matt Wolfe
The very first brand discovery I ever did was with a business owner around a fire pit. We were there for three hours — him telling me stories. It was unlike anything I've experienced in a conference room. Which makes me think maybe more of this work should happen exactly that way.
It may be time to revisit your brand — not just as a marketing asset, but as a cultural catalyst.
At Brand3, we help leadership teams excavate the clarity that’s already there — and turn it into messaging that strengthens marketing, hiring, customer experience, and culture from the inside out.
Schedule a conversation with our team to begin uncovering the story that will move your company forward.
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