Hersh Rephun is an Authority Advisor who works with founders whose businesses have become more complex than the market's understanding of them. His work helps ensure that everything they put into the world reinforces the same signal, so the right people understand not just what they do, but what they stand for.
Hersh specializes in the point of first contact, where perception is formed and decisions begin. He helps leaders close the gap between what they're building and how it's interpreted, because that gap determines whether people move forward, hesitate, misunderstand, or disengage entirely.
Over the past two decades, he has advised hundreds of individuals and organizations, from early-stage founders to billion-dollar brands, helping them establish the strategic clarity that underpins effective branding, communications, business development, and thought leadership.
Hersh began his career as a screenwriter with produced film credits before founding a boutique public relations firm representing artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators. While raising a family, he simultaneously spent a decade performing stand-up comedy at clubs including The Comedy Store, Comedy Cellar, and Funny Bone, sharpening an instinct for audience psychology, interpretation, and the split-second judgments that shape every interaction.
He is the founder of YES, BRAND BUILDERS, host of the YES, BRAND and Truth Tastes Funny podcasts, and author of Selling the Truth.
I never thought losing a business would lead me to the work I was actually meant to do.
As a kid, I colored outside the lines so aggressively that instead of reading books for book reports, I wrote entirely new stories using the original characters. Which, in hindsight, was probably less “creative student” and more “early warning sign.”
I became a screenwriter with three produced film credits. (You haven’t lived until Bruce Campbell stars in one of your movies.)
Then I built a successful niche PR firm and learned the art of media relations, client management, and championing artists and innovators. I also learned something less comfortable:
You can be successful at something and still feel completely disconnected from yourself inside it.
So naturally, I responded in the healthiest possible way:
I spent a decade performing standup comedy at places like The Comedy Store, Comedy Cellar, and Funny Bone while simultaneously trying to maintain some version of a stable adult life.
I learned two important things:
- Chicken tenders taste the same everywhere.
- Audiences tell the truth faster than people do.
Comedy sharpened my understanding of perception, timing, emotional tension, and the strange gap between what someone intends and what other people actually receive.
Eventually, that understanding carried into the next chapter:
a sneaker marketing agency I co-founded with a brilliant friend and business partner. We built campaigns, worked with major brands, and saw our creative end up on billboards, in magazines, and across digital platforms.
Then COVID hit.
Our business depended heavily on travel and in-person access, and almost overnight the machine stopped moving.
That period cracked something open in me.
The stress evolved into sleeplessness, anxiety, and a growing realization that I had spent years splitting myself into compartments:
creative person
business person
comic
strategist
provider
performer
I finally reached a point where continuing the same way felt harder than confronting what was actually true.
So I started doing the deeper internal work:
personal development
meditation
introspection
re-evaluating identity, ambition, success, and purpose
Somewhere in that process, I realized the thing I’d been circling my entire career:
My real fascination was never just branding.
It was why people misunderstand things in the first place.
Why some people, ideas, and businesses immediately create movement while others require endless explanation despite being equally valuable.
Why audiences often decide what something is before they fully understand it.
And why that first interpretation quietly shapes everything that follows.
Over time, all the disconnected pieces of my life started making sense together:
screenwriting
comedy
branding
live audiences
storytelling
identity
human behavior
business strategy
Not as separate careers.
As different angles on the same obsession.
That eventually became the foundation for YES, BRAND Builders, the Truth Tastes Funny podcast and live experience, and the advisory work I do today with founders, executives, creators, speakers, and public thinkers.
And ultimately, it became the foundation for my first book:
Which is really the story of what happens when you stop trying to become a marketable version of yourself and start building from what’s actually true.
While pursuing my copywriting career, I also achieved every level of success imaginable in standup comedy,
short of making a living.
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