About Heather Heydet | Creator of Behave Like a Brand™

Value before marketing

Long before I studied branding or led marketing organizations, I watched my father build businesses by solving real problems.

My father, Joseph Alan Wyant, was an entrepreneur long before “side hustle” became part of our vocabulary. He ran his own business as a manufacturer’s representative in the plastics and aerosol industries while continually building practical solutions around unmet needs.

He invented Security Mailing Tubes, a safer way to ship important documents and architectural plans when nothing on the market did the job. The United States Postal Service became his first client. He did not enter a category. He created one. That business helped pay for my brother’s and my college education.

He later created Losorea, aerosol spelled backward, after recognizing that rejected aerosol cans needed a safer disposal solution. He designed equipment to remove the contents and propellant, crush the cans, and make recycling possible without releasing harmful chemicals. Then he drove the equipment to clients and operated it himself.

He taught me to notice what is missing, listen for what people truly need, take smart risks, and create value where others see only a problem.

Joseph Alan Wyant, entrepreneur and Heather Heydet’s father — ProvenanceJoseph Alan WyantManufacturer’s Representative · Inventor · My FatherBusinesses grow when they create meaningful value for other people.

Big ideas, not just big messages

The mentor who changed my direction.

I thought I was headed into advertising. Then a professor at the University of Georgia chased me down on campus and insisted I meet Frank Lane, a former Procter & Gamble marketer who had helped build Shout, Charmin, Neutrogena, and Bullfrog.

For five years at his firm, I worked across more than fifteen household brands including Gatorade, SC Johnson, Campbell Soup, Keebler, Walmart, and Mead Johnson. He taught me the full architecture of a brand: research, product, pricing, packaging, distribution, sales, incentives, advertising, and the organizational decisions required to make the promise true.

Frank’s lesson was never about clever slogans. It was about building the whole package so the company could become famous for something specific, compelling, and difficult to copy. He taught me to think like a marketer, not merely a messenger.

I can highly recommend Heather. I worked in brand and marketing management at GE, Procter & Gamble, S.C. Johnson Wax, and was President of Neutrogena. I would place Heather in the top 2% of people I have ever worked with in my career.

Frank LaneFormer President, Neutrogena

Strategy only matters when people can use it

The client’s chair.

I left consulting because I wanted to know what it felt like to sit in the client’s chair.

At ADP®, I moved into B2B and learned the lesson that shaped everything after it: brilliant strategy is useless when the sales force cannot explain the value, defend the price, or tell the story in its own words. In B2B, sales is the distribution channel. Marketing’s job is to help sales win.

So I stopped building campaigns only for the market and started building tools for the people carrying the promise: proof points, pricing logic, objection answers, and language they could actually use in the room.

It was also at ADP® that I worked with Bill Campbell, founder of The Application Group. When I became frustrated by the foundational work required before we could reach the bigger growth ideas, Bill reminded me: “You pushed against a mountain, and it moved.” He taught me to meet organizations where they are, make big thinking useful, and never let perfection prevent meaningful progress.

Where the method became an operating system

The reinvention.

When September 11 changed the consulting industry, I reinvented again. I taught myself to code websites and began working with regional founder-led businesses. They hired me for tangible deliverables, but those projects opened the door to deeper work: clarifying the promise, strengthening the sales story, aligning the team, and building a business capable of proving its value.

At The Holbrook, I first brought the lessons I had accumulated across brand strategy, sales enablement, leadership, operations, and customer experience together as one intentional way of working. At EXOVATIONS®, I was able to perfect and prove it.