What's up, everybody?

This is Cortland from NDHackers.com, and you are listening to the IndieHackers podcast.

On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes.

How do they get to where they are today?

How do they make decisions both at their businesses and in their personal lives, and what exactly makes their businesses tick? And the goal here is always so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go on to build our own successful online businesses. In this episode, I'll be talking to Ali Lafever. Allie is a co-founder of Obedient, where she and her co-founder lead a small but talented team that has run brand marketing campaigns for companies like BuzzFeed, AT&T, Dell, and the Dallas Cowboys. Allie, welcome to the show, and thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. It is my pleasure to have you on here, Ali. The top of your homepage makes it very clear what you do. If I go to

obedientagency.com, at the very top, it says in big bold letters, we do all the shit that other

branding agencies do, but funnier. What do other branding agencies do? And why aren't they as funny as you

guys? Well, I appreciate you snooping around the homepage. I would say that what we mean by all the shit

that other branding agencies do, but funnier is we are doing what I think other agencies

claim to do, right? Is that we are helping build your brand in a way that gets you brand

awareness, brand attention through the use of

creative, clever converting campaigns and then design, et cetera. But I think the spin for us is that all

the things that other people are doing, we deem tend to be pretty safe. They tend to be pretty expected. Can be a little bit

boring, can be sometimes ineffective. A lot of times fear-based or really praying on your

audiences' insecurities or inadequacies and really using fear as a primary tactic. And so we do all

the things that you want for your brand. So you want

your brand to get attention and you want people to remember it and you want people to get excited

by it and you want to increase sales and grow your business. But we do it in a way that's fun,

that's feel good, that's funny, that is positive, that is different, that is surprising, and that is

really unlike anything else you see in the market.

You said that a lot of marketing is fear-based, and on your website you say the same thing,

that you need to be willing to sell with fun, not fear. What does it mean to sell with fear?

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