Standing Out When Every City and Company Sounds the Same

In the Season 4 premiere and 200th episode of The Building Texas Show, 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 discuss why every city and company pitch starts to sound the same—and how to stand out. The episode, titled Why Every City Sounds the Same - And How to Stand Out, is also available on YouTube.

Fears introduces vTaiwan, a civic platform used during Taiwan's debate over Uber, where users post comments and others vote thumbs up or down instead of piling on in reply threads. He tells McKenzie that this structure reduces the heat in public input, noting that city council meetings often devolve into "who's yelling the loudest." Drawing on that model and his work with idhubs, Fears suggests that city councils could use similar software to let residents post comments, vote on them, and see trending concerns—including ways to improve the local economic environment for businesses. The conversation then turns to why so many city and company pitches blur together. Fears cites Theodore Levitt's 1960 Harvard Business Review essay "Marketing Myopia" and introduces his concept of a "compelling market edge," defined as "what's going to make you unique in the marketplace that no other competitor can talk about" and "what is going to compel a person to buy." He points out that every city sounds the same—great schools, good public works, great parks, family-centric—but they're not. When asked about San Marcos, he and McKenzie land on Texas State University as a unique asset, and Fears offers Prairie View A&M University as another example of a distinct through line tied to perseverance. The same problem appears in sales: Fears recounts asking four salespeople at one company what business they are in and getting four different answers, concluding that "your company is four different companies." He also shares a story of an operator who treated his toughest competitor as proprietary information, only to realize "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 but 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: 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, where a link lets people book time with him. The full episode is on The Building Texas Show episode page and on YouTube.