Ennis Wright on Why TikTok Is a Storytelling Platform, Not a Dancing App | Rock Solid

Bryan: Welcome to Rock Solid, the Round Rock Business Leaders podcast. Join your host, Bryan Eisenberg, as he explores the journeys of entrepreneurs and companies across Round Rock, Texas. From startups and nonprofits to large organizations, each guest shares their passion for doing business in this thriving community. Let’s dive in.

Bryan: Welcome to Rock Solid. I’m Bryan Eisenberg and I’m joined today by Ennis Wright, an account executive with TikTok. Very happy to have you here today. We invited you to be here most importantly because you were recently at the Round Rock Chamber for our Founders Forum, and you presented about TikTok. I found it fascinating from the back of the room, first time just listening to everybody and the questions they had — because your presentation was less presentation, more interaction. I’m just curious, because you grew up here: what did you think of the questions? Do you get the same kinds of questions in other places, or were they a little more sophisticated?

Ennis: For me it was very inspiring, because generally when we do events with government groups it’s not as conversational. It’s more of “let me come in, let me give you a presentation, this is TikTok, if you want to learn more reach out to me.” I wanted to take a different approach. Let’s be more interactive. I love Round Rock. It’s home for me. So let’s actually have that conversation where I can say, I’m going to give you an overview of TikTok, but what’s more important to me is that I can answer all of y’all’s questions. And going back to those questions — I loved them. They were second and third level questions, and not only that, the curiosity of everybody. They were just so curious about how TikTok works. That’s what excites me, being able to share that knowledge, but not in a technical way — in a way that they can all understand it. That was so special to me.

Bryan: Before we go deeper, there’s probably a lot of people listening to this who heard “TikTok” and they’re like, “No, it’s not for me.” What’s the biggest misconception that most people have about TikTok, especially business owners?

Ennis: I’d say it’s really two things. Number one, they say “My audience isn’t on TikTok.” And number two, they say “Oh, TikTok is just a dancing app. It’s a dancing platform for teens.” Or memes, or jokes, or laughter — which it is. But when you really look at TikTok as a whole, I’m working with B2B companies. I’m working with everyday companies who are spending millions in ads. But I’m also working with mom and pop shops, or brands that were literally built up from zero to one hundred. So that itself inspires me to continue to share this creativity and knowledge, because with that misconception comes a lot of misinformation. Half my job isn’t even selling TikTok — it’s teaching TikTok. The other half is saying, okay, now that you understand how TikTok works, let’s put together a plan where you can go organic, paid, and those grow in parallel.

Bryan: For someone like Brent — the owner here of Round Rock Studio, who produces podcasts and has a photo studio — why should a local business like his, right here by Round Rock High School, be on TikTok?

Ennis: It’s really the storytelling aspect. I was talking to him earlier — this is such a beautiful space. You have multiple spaces to podcast, multiple spaces to come and shoot content. Why not meet your people where they are? A lot of traditional brands have their website. They might be on Meta, they might be on Twitter. But one of my favorite stats: 60% of TikTok users have not been on Meta in the past month. When you look at the grand scheme of everything, you’re missing your audience by not posting on TikTok organically.

Bryan: I want to ask about this because one of my big passions is the way AI is transforming search. I invented the term conversion rate optimization 25-plus years ago. But my curiosity is that websites are kind of disappearing in terms of engagement. Search traffic is going away. But TikTok traffic just keeps surging. To me, this TikTok ecosystem is going to be just as valuable as the AI ecosystem going forward, if not more, because of the engagement.

Ennis: One of my favorite things to touch on with that is the halo effect. While TikTok could be your number one paid and organic channel, I think the true potential comes from making it a halo effect channel — meaning, I post on TikTok, I continue posting my content, I might not be seeing direct sales on TikTok, but what you aren’t seeing, which some brands are measuring through offline measurement, is people who go from TikTok to Google to search what they just saw. The phrase “TikTok made me buy it” exists for a reason. I’m going on vacation in two weeks and I’ve already bought almost $200 worth of clothes on TikTok Shop. But going back to AI and websites — your website still needs to be good and a great landing page. But what I tell a lot of my brands is: you could have the best website in the world, but if nobody knows about it, is it the best website in the world? Which is why you need a platform like TikTok. Someone sees a video, goes to look you up on Facebook, then goes to your website, and now they make a purchase. That’s the halo ripple. It’s not saying TikTok will do everything. It’s saying TikTok will aid on your other platforms and they all come together as one.

Bryan: TikTok is just for those young people, come on. Why is my audience going to be there?

Ennis: My grandmother is a little over 70. She sends me TikToks. And not just that — thinking about when I first started at TikTok, I had an early client who sold vitamins for older audiences, for blood flow and blood sugar. The conversion rates they were seeing, the sales, blew my mind. It was 50-to-75-year-olds purchasing over and over. It blows your mind when you see the older audience on TikTok, especially me being 26. My mom sends me TikToks sometimes. TikTok isn’t the platform it was when it first came out.

Ennis: It’s either going to be life insurance, something to do with building credit, or something about politics I’ve never seen and I’m just like — another point of view.

Bryan: You went to Stony Point High School. Played football there. And when you walked into the Round Rock Chamber for the Founders Forum, I think that was your first time in the new Griffith building. Share a little bit about what that experience was like.

Ennis: It honestly blew my mind. It’s not the old Round Rock that you remember. And Round Rock as a whole — walking into that building, I was just like, “Wow, this used to be the library and it’s day and night. I don’t even recognize the building.” Just to see the way Round Rock has built this city. I grew up off of Chandler Creek, where the whole neighborhood was grass outside of Legends Village. Even seeing that get connected to Old Settler’s Park on the back end, Kalahari come through — forget all of that, to see the Brushy Creek Trail, the new pavilion, the overlay. I’m like, where was all this when I was a kid? The way Round Rock has built out the city is so beautiful. Elementary, middle, and high school — as well as my older sister and younger sister — this has truly been an environment for us to grow. And to see it as an adult, and they just got Golden Chick where Chicken Express used to be — that’s all I need.

Bryan: Let’s get back to TikTok. What about your financial advisor, your roofer? Why do they need to be on there and what do they do to get started?

Ennis: For a lot of these brands, lead generation is a very big thing. Whether you’re a roofing brand looking to get more installs, a foundation company — you see a lot of that in Round Rock since it’s an older community — or people selling life insurance: by storytelling through creative, you’re able to bring in new leads and new people to actually talk to. For Brent, it would be content producers who want to up their game. Even if this was my studio, I would post at least three times a day and just talk about all of our amenities and what we have to offer. And his story of where he came from and what he’s done in the past — people want to hear about that.

Bryan: It’s funny because when I started at Oracle, storytelling really wasn’t as big.

Ennis: I started at Oracle in like the financial services cloud. Very old school — you wear your slacks, your button-up, all of that. About two years later, going from Canva to a startup to TikTok, storytelling went from not as big of a deal to the name of the game. So now, honestly, if you can’t storytell, you’re going to have a hard time growing in today’s world.

Bryan: For someone who doesn’t have that background — do you think it would make sense for Brent to have classes here where he’s helping people learn how to do that storytelling?

Ennis: Storytelling is now the name of the game, especially with AI. AI has come in and told us, “I can do all this for you. The only thing you need to do is storytell.” So it would be so powerful to sit business owners down who say “Our audience isn’t on TikTok, we don’t need a channel like that.” To sit people down and say: you have a great product, you have a great brand, you’re bringing in good sales, but nobody knows your story. I’m an emotional buyer. I can see some of the best stuff in the world and scroll past it. As soon as I see a story — I just bought a NASA shirt because I’ve been watching Artemis from day one to now.

Bryan: There’s three main stories you’ve got to get right as a business. There’s the story of the founder and why you exist. There’s the culture story — what does the team talk about, how we serve, how we work together. And then there’s the customer story. When they’re fragmented, the business struggles.

Ennis: Exactly. And I think the beauty of storytelling is: if you do it right, you can pierce directly through your possible customer’s mind without selling them on a thing. That’s where I think the best storytelling comes from. Not the forced “oh yeah, this is us, this is what we do, I’m the founder.” But the true: “This is what I went through building this. I experienced this firsthand and I built this company so you don’t have to experience that.” And they’re going to say, “You know what? Let’s look at this website. What are these guys about?”

Bryan: I picked an HVAC company once as my example. Every HVAC company does the exact same thing — they replace air conditioners, they fix them, they do ducts. Nothing remarkable about them. But this guy built a hundred-million-dollar brand on the story behind how he started holding his dad’s flashlight, and that became part of their logo and identity and wrapped their trucks around it. His dad taught him that every air conditioner needs to be tightened really tight. So he came up with an innovation: he was going to use red screws instead of standard silver or gold. Why red? Because they stand out. The customers could see that things were tightened and changed because they saw the red screws. And when you start hearing the staff — they talk about making sure everything is tight and plum and level. Those stories became a hundred-million-dollar brand in HVAC.

Ennis: Exactly. This is how a company grew — and this is before TikTok. I can imagine what they would have done with TikTok in that time.

Bryan: My son was recently recorded at the farmers market — he works a booth selling babka. You’ve seen the videos of the guy who goes around and only buys from people with no customers? He approached my son and posted on Instagram and TikTok. Over 700,000 views. A 16-year-old selling babka. Why is it so important to make sure you’re on the different platforms?

Ennis: Looking back at the example of your son — TikTok doesn’t just give you a platform to sell and make money. It also enables people to be creative, authentic, and connect. Your son just unlocked a brand that nobody really was paying attention to at the farmers market. And now forget just the farmers market — that’s where the halo effect comes in. They say, “You know what, we went viral, we’re getting a bunch of customers. Now we’re not just going to do a farmers market exclusively. We’re going to get a website.” And that definitely produced a spike.

Bryan: Some people are shy about being on video. You talked about the talent side of this — if you don’t want to be the creative talent, there’s a way to tap into others. Can you share about that?

Ennis: TikTok One has two things. It has a creator marketplace and it has creative content that is fully funded by TikTok — the only thing you pay for is ad spend. The creator marketplace gives you a marketplace of creators we have vetted and you work directly in that marketplace to pick, choose, pay, and have them post on TikTok for you. So Brent could find creators about content creation and if they’re in the area they could shoot stuff about the studio. And the cool thing about our creators is they already have the following. You do what we call a spark ad, where you put your brand, your logo, your image behind their creative and push it out to everybody.

Bryan: You do not need to go viral on TikTok to have success.

Ennis: I’d much rather you have 50 likes constantly, 100 likes constantly, than have one video with 350,000 likes and then your next video gets 10. What good does that do you?

Bryan: My son was recently recorded at the farmers market — he works a booth selling babka. A creator who only buys from people with no customers stopped at his booth and posted on Instagram and TikTok. Over 700,000 views.

Ennis: TikTok doesn’t just give you a platform to sell and make money. It also enables people to be creative, authentic, and connect. Your son just unlocked a brand nobody was paying attention to at the farmers market. That’s where the halo effect comes in.

Bryan: If someone here wants to focus in on people who are in my area — how do we make sure they see it versus the whole globe?

Ennis: I go to a barber in Pflugerville who’s been cutting my hair since high school — he finally opened his own shop. One of the biggest things I’ve been teaching him is: use zip codes, captions, hashtags. My video that went viral — if y’all look up my name — I had a video go viral because an apartment complex towed my car improperly. I said “Pflugerville, Pflugerville, Texas,” put a hashtag, put a location, and my video blew up. I had people commenting, “Did we go to elementary school together?” And I’m like, the power of social media. That algorithm is special.

Bryan: If someone here wants to tap in more and get started, what’s the best way they can get in touch with you?

Ennis: You can find me on TikTok. And I’m very active on LinkedIn. If you want to reach out to me or any of my team members on LinkedIn, we’re all on the new business team at TikTok. Really special team right now. All of my co-workers are so smart and knowledgeable — just reach out and we’re happy to help. This is home for me. And as busy as I am, I also did some substitute teaching at Stony Point, Hopewell, Hernandez through Round Rock ISD. This is truly home. I grew up around all of this. Round Rock has molded me into who I am now, and I appreciate it so much.

Bryan: Well, we appreciate you and the time you spent with us today. Thank you.

Ennis: Yes, sir.