Branding Experts Don't Understand Branding
There is a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of the creative and business worlds. It’s a dirty secret Chris Do lets his audience in on immediately. “Branding people don't understand branding,” he declares. The room, filled with accountants and entrepreneurs, breathes a sigh of relief. They are not alone.
The problem is a confusion of terms and a focus on the superficial. Most people mistakenly believe a brand is a logo, a color palette, or a clever tagline. They think it is a static asset to be designed and deployed.
This is wrong.
To correct this, Do turns to brand strategist Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap. Neumeier provides a definition that shifts the power from the company to the customer: A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.
“It's not what you say it is,” Do emphasizes, “it's what they say it is.”
You can claim your brand is about care, empathy, and going the extra mile. But if your team is curt, if your policies nickel and dime clients, your brand is the negative experience people report. The logo is merely a container for this meaning. It is a symbol that collects all the feelings, stories, and interactions associated with your business.
As Do explains, “Whereas products are made in factories, brands are made in the hearts and minds of people.” This distinction is critical. A beautiful logo on a terrible company is just a beautiful container for a terrible reputation.
Branding as Impression Management
If a brand is a gut feeling, then what is branding? It cannot be the act of controlling feelings. That’s impossible. But we can influence them.
Do introduces a concept from his friend, Dr. Christine Lussier. Branding is impression management.
Every single day, in every interaction, you are managing impressions. It happens with your children, your colleagues, your clients, and the barista at the coffee shop. The way you dress, the words you choose, your energy, and the consistency of your behavior all contribute to the impression you leave behind.
The most relatable example is a job interview. You dress for the job you want, not the one you have. You prepare your answers. You present a specific version of yourself designed to create a positive, competent impression. You would not show up in shorts and flip-flops. That, too, is impression management, just a poor execution of it.
This idea is echoed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who famously said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room.”
However, there is a dangerous line to walk. When the persona you project drifts too far from your true self, you become inauthentic. People have a finely tuned radar for fakes. We are, as Do notes, “very good at sniffing out inauthentic brands.”
The goal is to manage your impression authentically. It’s about being the best, most consistent version of your true self, not inventing a character. The visual identity, the logo, the colors, and the typefaces are just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface lie the crucial elements:
- Your voice
- Your behavior
- Your beliefs and values
- Your customer experience
Authentic branding aligns all of these elements, ensuring the impression you create is a true reflection of the value you deliver.
The Art of Guerrilla Positioning
Once you understand brand and branding, the next critical layer is positioning. Do offers a simple, powerful definition: Positioning is the space that you occupy in the hearts and minds of your customers relative to your competitors.
The last three words are the most important part: relative to your competitors.
Positioning isn't about what you say in a vacuum. It’s about how you are perceived in a crowded marketplace. To explain this, Do cites Al Ries and Jack Trout, who literally wrote the book on the subject, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. Their core idea is that positioning is an act of reframing.
Do illustrates this with a simple analogy. A canvas with paint spilled on it is worthless. But place that same canvas in a gallery, surround it with a beautiful frame and a velvet rope, and it becomes a valuable piece of art. The object didn't change, but its frame did. “It's how you frame something,” Do explains, “determines how you perceive it and what you feel about it.”
Effective positioning, therefore, is about picking a fight. It’s a dirty, almost nefarious tactic of guerrilla marketing. The goal is to take your competitor's greatest strength and, through reframing, turn it into a weakness.
Do provides three classic examples:
- Listerine vs. Scope: Listerine built its brand on being a powerful, medicinal mouthwash that killed germs. Their ads even embraced the harsh taste: “It’s the taste people hate, twice a day.” When Scope entered the market, they didn’t try to be stronger. They attacked Listerine’s strength head-on. Their simple, brilliant tagline? “No more medicine breath.” Scope captured a third of the market by reframing Listerine’s power as an unpleasant, medicinal flaw.
- Coca-Cola vs. 7 Up: During the Cola Wars of the 1980s, Coke and Pepsi were locked in a battle for dominance. Pepsi was “the choice of the new generation,” chasing trends with celebrity endorsements. Coke simply leaned into its heritage as “the real thing.” Seeing this, 7 Up couldn't compete as another cola. Instead, they positioned themselves against the entire category. They became The Uncola. This masterful stroke of reframing carved out a unique space for them in the consumer's mind.
- PC vs. Mac: In 2006, the PC, primarily running Microsoft Windows, held 97% of the market. It was the undisputed standard for serious business. Apple, in its quest for a comeback, launched the legendary “Get a Mac” campaign. The ads featured two characters: a stuffy, formal man as the PC and a cool, casual young man as the Mac. The campaign never talked about processing power or specs. It simply repositioned the dominant market leader as old, bloated, uncool, and out of date. Do notes the campaign was so effective it infuriated Bill Gates. “You know the advertising is working when the CEO is upset,” he says.
This is positioning in action. It’s not about being better; it’s about being different in a way that matters to the customer.
Your Anti-Competitive Playbook
The purpose of strong positioning is to make the customer’s choice obvious. As Do states, the purpose of position is to reduce or outright eliminate competition. When you are clear about what you stand for and, just as importantly, what you stand against, you attract the right people and repel the wrong ones. You stop being a commodity and start being a category of one. This is a journey many entrepreneurs can learn from, as detailed in how to go from freelancing into a seven-figure agency.
Do offers a simple, three-step playbook to start positioning your own business:
- Identify who you are really competing against. When a potential client is considering you, who else is in the running? Be realistic. You can't be aspirational here, because the comparison has to resonate with the customer.
- Ask what your competition is known for. What are their top three traits? If you're a small, personal accounting firm, what are the perceived traits of a massive firm like PWC? They might be seen as big, faceless, and impersonal.
- Be the 'anti' of whatever they are. If the competition is a 'big faceless organization,' you are the person who cares about their business and stays up late worrying if they’ll make payroll. You are creating a clear choice. Do you want the PC, or do you want the Mac? Do you want the giant corporation, or do you want the dedicated partner?
You reframe their scale as a weakness and your size as a strength. This is how you stop competing and start commanding.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Premium Pricing
When you successfully eliminate competition through positioning, something profound happens: you no longer have to compete on price. You can command a premium.
This is where many service professionals get stuck. They believe the path to winning a project is to be affordable and easy to work with. Do argues the opposite is true. You want to make it harder to work with you by signaling immense value.
Price is a powerful signal. To illustrate this, Do shares his personal story of setting his coaching rates. He started out doing it for free, but quickly found himself with no time to do his actual work. On the advice of a friend, he decided to charge, but felt guilty. He timidly suggested $250 an hour.
His friend’s response was a lesson in positioning. “If you charge anything less than $500 an hour, I would not respect you anymore,” she told him.
So, he set his rate at $500. The requests for free advice stopped. The price acted as a filter. But then, a new problem emerged: he got booked too much. So he raised his price to $750 an hour. The same cycle repeated. Then $1,500 an hour. Each price increase brought a temporary lull, followed by a surge of new, more serious clients.
Finally, he set the price at a level he thought no one would pay: $5,000 an hour. This was a positioning play. It was designed to steer people toward his courses and events, making them seem like a bargain in comparison. For a long time, no one booked him. Then, someone did.
“Price does communicate position,” Do concludes. The lesson is not just about money; it’s about psychology.
A high price does several things:
- It acts as a barrier. It filters out people who are not serious, who are not true believers in the value you provide.
- It attracts a different buyer. The person willing to pay a premium is more invested, more likely to follow your advice, and less likely to question your process. They see you as an expert, not a vendor.
- It creates freedom. Do uses the “Friday night phone call” test. If a client calls you at 6 PM on a Friday, are you annoyed or are you happy to pick up? “If you charge enough,” he says, “I pick up the phone. How you doin’? What do you need?” Premium pricing allows you to serve clients without resentment, focusing on outcomes instead of counting hours. This approach to value is central to understanding how to move away from hourly billing, a concept explored in Do's masterclass on value-based pricing.
You have to be bold enough to state your worth, and then work to close the gap between the price you ask for and the value you deliver.
Marketing Is Not Advertising
With a clear brand and position, you can then turn to marketing. But just as with branding, most people get marketing wrong. They equate it with advertising: intrusive, repetitive messages forced upon people who don't want to hear them.
Do offers a more generous definition from marketing guru Seth Godin. Marketing is the generous act of helping people get what they want. It’s not about your needs; it's about theirs.
Godin’s philosophy is to “do something that matters for people who care.” This means finding a passionate audience and serving them, rather than interrupting the masses. As Do puts it, “Sell to people who actually want to hear from you versus interrupting people who don't.”
This leads to the idea of **Permission Marketing**, the title of Godin's influential book. It's an invitation for customers to volunteer to participate in a long-term marketing campaign of increasing value. Permission marketing has three key components:
- Is it anticipated? Are people looking forward to hearing from you?
- Is it personal? Does it feel like it was made for them?
- Is it relevant? Does it address their specific needs and desires?
To deliver this, you must think like an educator and develop a marketing curriculum. You start with broad, exciting information to build awareness, then go deeper and deeper, providing more detailed, high-value content as the relationship progresses. You can't give them the advanced material on day one; they aren't ready for it.
This journey can be mapped using the AIDCA framework: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Conversion, and Advocacy. Most businesses stop at conversion, but the real magic happens in the final step. Advocacy is about creating an experience so delightful that customers feel compelled to tell others about you. You want them to become your volunteer sales force.
Building Your Brand Framework: A Case Study
To make these concepts tangible, Do provides a simple but powerful brand framework that connects the customer to the final execution.
It starts with the customer, moves to the value you create for them, and then defines the sensory experience of the brand.
To demonstrate, he deconstructs the iconic American brand, Harley-Davidson. What is the value proposition of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle? It’s not about horsepower or 0-to-60 times. It’s an emotional promise.
- The Value Proposition: It's self-expression on two wheels. It’s the promise of adventure, freedom, and independence. It taps into an outlaw culture, a desire to fight the system and reclaim the road.
- The Tone of Voice: Based on this value prop, the brand's voice is not friendly or corporate. It’s rebellious, passionate, controversial, defiant, and unconventional.
- The Look and Feel: This voice translates into a visual language that is distressed, raw, rugged, unpolished, and authentic. It feels masculine and American.
With these words as guides, a designer can build a mood board, curating images that capture this feeling. This process of collecting and refining visuals creates a clear and consistent brand identity that is rooted in a deep understanding of the customer's emotional desires. This is a core part of a winning brand strategy.
The final layer is language. Powerful brands create their own vocabulary, a secret language that signals who is in the tribe. Do points to the Heaven's Gate cult, which systematically redefined common words to isolate its members. They didn't have bodies; they had “vessels.” This is what brands do when they create proprietary terms like Nike’s Air technology or Adidas’s Adiprene foam. They make you use their language and create trademarkable IP.
Do highlights a conceptual campaign for Harley-Davidson with the tagline “Roll Your Own.” It features images that redefine everyday concepts in the language of the brand. A picture of a donut becomes a “Morning Donut,” with the copy, “Raise hell before lunch.” An image of a lone motorcycle in an alley becomes the “Black Market,” with the line, “99 bucks. Any less and you could be arrested.”
The language reinforces the outlaw mythology, speaking directly to the customer's emotional desire for rebellion.
Who Gave You Permission?
Theory is one thing; execution is another. During a Q&A, an audience member reveals her struggle. She wants to move from a $1,500/month scoped service to a $10,000/month subscription model but feels held back by a lack of confidence and specific accounting knowledge.
Do challenges her barriers. The knowledge is attainable. The real obstacle is something else. When people say they lack confidence, what they are often looking for is permission.
“We're all just looking for permission from somebody,” he says. His own journey to charging $500 an hour began when his friend gave him permission to value his time. The audience member blames “the industry” for her hesitation. Do presses her. “Who they?” he asks. “Who told you you couldn’t do it?”
The room falls silent. The “they” is never a real person. It is an imaginary gatekeeper we invent to give ourselves an excuse not to go for what we want. The “they” is the person you see in the mirror every day.
“Creative folks, they don't live in the real world,” Do explains. “They live in the world of their imagination, and then the real world aligns to that.” This is a mindset available to everyone, not just artists.
You can ask for $10,000 a month. You will get a lot of nos, just as Do did when he raised his prices. But eventually, you will get a yes. And you will wonder what took you so long.
Stop waiting for an external authority to validate you. It will never come. The permission you seek is your own.
Do’s final charge is simple and profound. “Decide and you will be,” he says. “Stop letting someone else tell you what you are. Decide it and be it.”
TRANSCRIPT
so when people say we'll make people believe this that our brand you can't you can show up you can present yourself you can be consistent you can behave and speak a certain way but then it's up to the other person decide brand is a person's gut feeling it's not what you say it
is it's what they say it is we know what branding is it's impression management how we influence people's perceptions of us we want to be true not inauthentic so then now what is positioning without further Ado we have an amazing keynote speaker today let's give an incredible welcome to Mr Chris doe all
right all right thank you very much I'm going to just start with a really brief story and that when I was in high school I wasn't sure a career in design was the way to go because the only examples of creative people that I saw that were working were like drawing your portrait
at the Fisherman's Warf or somebody who would airbrush your name I mean they're artists and they're beautiful but I was like I don't want to live that that life that looks like a really rough life so as as a junior in high school I took an aptitude test I went to the career
counselor I went through the whole thing do you like to talk to people no do you like facts yes you know linear binary great great great great so it told me that I was supposed to be of all things an accountant so you know maybe this is a long homecoming trip for me
so I say that so we may have more in common than you think so for for most of my career I worked in commercials and music video and that's what I did did and I found out that within the creative Community they needed a lot of help with business skills and so that's
what I was doing I was teaching creatives business skills pricing negotiation sales those kinds of things and then I realized just very recently in the last year there's this whole other group of people I I'll refer to them as left reiners I know that's a kind of a small container to put people
into but what they wanted to do was to be creative so I was sitting here facing creatives trying to teach them business skills and then on this other side they there were business people who wanted to learn creative skills and I don't think we're all that different I think there's this really neat
intersection between the two creatives who want to be entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who want to be creative so I'm hoping that's the reason why Hector has me here today so without further Ado I know I have not a lot of time so I'm going to push through this keynote presentation I put together okay
so we're going to get into branding fundamentals now one of the interesting things is I was recently speaking at an event where there were a bunch of Realtors and the one realtor came up to me and said Chris I'm so glad you're talking about branding because our people don't understand branding I said
that's okay because branding people don't understand branding So today we're going to try to come together right so don't feel like you're left out I'm going to just try to give you the primer to introduce you to some Concepts that you can use today but obviously there's a lot more that you're going
to need to learn so this is meant to be a bit interactive and I love that people are already yelling at me I love it I don't want to stand up here and just talk to myself the whole time so I I just want you to think about like two or three words
that come to your mind just first process like complete the sentence for me a brand is and just think about it a brand is what story story identity Vision Vision who we are who we are exting exciting what recogniz recognizable image image okay we got a lot of this is great so you
can see that no one gave us the same answer and that's probably the problem there's lots of definitions for a brand and I'm going to go to the guy who wrote the book on brand and his name is Marty newm so he says a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product
service or organization it's a gut feeling okay so it's not it's not what you say it is it's what they say it is so we all can say we're our brand is about care empathy going the extra mile but if your culture and your company do not behave that way what is your
brand it's what they say it is so if you're Kurt if you're always looking at the bottom line and you nickel and dime your clients that that's your brand brand it's what people say about you make sense so whereas products are made in factories brands are made in the hearts and minds of
people the people that you serve at every touch point in which they come in contact with every touch point a lot of people mistakenly think that a brand is the visual aspect the the identity of the logo is just a container for meaning Nike has the Nike swos has no meaning if the
company does not produce products that we love and tell a story that we want to repeat and tell others does that make sense so what happens is when you get into a room full of designers like well the logo is the brand kind of but not really it's a container for meaning there
are beautiful containers and they're ugly containers and I'm a design snob I'll admit it to you there are companies that I love whose logo is terrible therefore I do not buy their products I'm like that I know it's terrible it's a disease okay so now we understand yeah so then therefore branding is
what what is branding so if a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product service organiz ation what is branding okay connecting with them now the room got real quiet for some reason what's that making what they say okay how you present your brand okay a lot of good answers here Behavior
okay all right this is very good right I like the looks in your faces you're still pretty active right now we'll see how we're doing by the end of this all right so if it's a gut feeling we when we talk about feelings can we control people's feelings no but we can influence
them most definitely okay we can influence but we can't control so when people say we'll make people believe this out our brand you can't you can show up you can present yourself you can be consistent you can behave and speak a certain way but then it's up to the other person to decide
so Marty goes on to say if enough people have a similar gut feeling about you than you have a brand inevitably with accountants you're going to say well how many is enough people is it 36.7% or what is it I don't know he just said enough people we'll just leave it at that
okay all right so there was a recent article in the Harvard Business review about building your personal brand and I just wanted to pull a little bit don't bother reading the issue it's not very good sorry hbr okay so we know this in every interaction people are forming opinions about all of you
all the time so okay we that makes sense right and then Jeff bzo says well brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room that makes sense too okay so when you leave that's when people's real feelings come out and so my friend Christine lucer Dr Christine lucer said
that well then branding is impression management we can understand that right because you create an impression an imprint on each and every single person from your children to your co-worker to your boss your employees to everyone in the room you create an impression so you want to manage that impression if you can
so the way that you dress the way you speak the way you carry yourself the content of what you say the consistency in which you show up the energy you put out there is part of the impression management the easiest way to understand this is when you show up for a job interview
you remember back like when you still have pimples on your face and you showed up for a job interview you dressed a certain way because you dress for the job that you want you're trying to impress a person versus coming with shorts and flip-flops and your hair not done you wouldn't do that
so this is how we show up to the world now there comes a point in which so much of you shows up as this Persona versus the real person and you start to move away from who you are so we have to be careful when we're trying to manage our impression that we
don't become someone else or something else does that make sense okay very good because we're very good at sniffing out inauthentic Brands okay so at the very top of this this is where the designers get all confused is like the logo that's the brand isn't it well that's part of it the colors
the visual aspects the identity the type faces used how you uh the collateral all the logo and ass signage that it's printed out yeah that's part of it but much deeper than that is the brand right The Voice the behavior the beliefs and the values how you create your customer experiences so we're
going to talk about that now when I talked to Hector and Carlos earlier not today but earlier they're like Chris talk about positioning we want to understand positioning so I have a lot to talk about in positioning so we understand what brand is brand is a person's got feeling it's not what you
say it is it's what they say is we know what branding is it's impression management how we influence people's perceptions of us we want to be true not inauthentic so then now what is positioning positioning is what the I told you it was going to get harder you stand in that industry how
you kind of position your name others that's a pretty good pretty good general definition I like that how you match a brand how you put it how you put it out there okay how you show up how you show up okay okay so I was trying to describe to somebody and then I
looked it up it's much better if I just look it up positioning is the space that you occupy in the hearts and minds of your customers this is the important part relative to your competitors you have to introduce the concept of competitors it's not just you say what it is okay it's what
you say it is and what how they feel and how they perceive you relative to your competitors and it's important understand that because we're going to start to take this apart so we're in a room full of accountants so it's going to be hard for us to stand apart but you all have
a competitive Advantage now from everybody who's not in this room today you understand that right Hector and team are pushing you to think outside the box to go outside of your comfort zone to incorporate new ways of thinking new ways of building and hopefully now I'll help you think about new ways of
showing up as your brand so position can be a tricky concept to understand and I was reading the book it's called positioning from the guys who coined the term positioning I think it's Al re and Jack trout art of reframing so just think about reframing we talked a little bit about reframing yesterday
right and the way I try to describe it to to Young designers reframing is this if you take a piece of canvas and you spill paint on it and you try to sell that piece of canvas it's probably not going to sell for a lot but if you put that piece of canvas
on a wall and gallery and you put a beautiful frame around it and a Red Velvet Rope around it that same piece of art becomes worth much more so it's how you frame something determines how you perceive it and what you feel about it okay so just remember reframing just think of like
the literal frame we move it somewhere else we change the frame we change the meaning so when we're trying to position ourselves what we want to do is we want to pick a fight we want to know who our competitors are so that we can say we are different than them and one
very effective and it's almost dirty way of doing this is to use some gorilla Warfare you make your competitors strength all of a sudden through reframing as a weakness when I read the book I was like these are dirty Gorilla Marketing tactics and it's wonderful it's it's nefarious if you think about it
so Listerine everybody here know Listerine yes you have a perception of lerine so when scope wanted to enter the market liserin was the dominant mouthwash brand so when we think of Listerine what do you associate Listerine with burning fres medicine freshness alcohol alcohol okay so I took some Liberties so we think of
lerin as this really strong powerful thing that kills germs it's medicinal it feels old to me too and it's like it burns Okay so when when lisine runs ads this is what they write it's the taste people hate twice a day so they Embrace that it's bad and it's true you want to
lean into who you are here's another one from them you can handle it germs can't you are tougher than the germs so you see like this is a pretty good positioning for them right we're going to dominate the market by showing people that we're really strong we're very serious and then of course
kills germs that cause bad breath so if you're a new upstart and you're trying to wedge your way into the hearts and minds of consumers when they're thinking about mouthwash as scope did you've got to attack the dominant brand so here's all they did they took what they already said and they reframed
it when I click on this you'll see how it works and how dirty this Warfare is no more medicine breath and then scope jumped into the market and started to capture like 33% of the market it's incredible from zero to that they just picked a fight okay I'm going to show you two
more examples is it starting to make sense now this is positioning you have to think about where you live relative to your competitors so Coca-Cola the classic all right so what do we associate the original the one and only and and Coke I don't know if you know this but in the 80s
there was like the Cola Wars right Coke versus Pepsi you guys are old enough I can see you we're there too I'm not calling you old I'm old just like you okay so there was this moment where it felt like Coke and Pepsi were neck and neck choice of new generation people preferred
uh Pepsi in a blind taste test all that kind of stuff because they made a critical mistake Pepsi is now number three in the coal Awards you know who number one is Coke who's number two Dr Pepper what Coke Zero Diet Coke that's how dominant they are Coke is the number one brand
Diet Coke just the same thing with without sugar is number two and they made a critical mistake they chase Trends Pepsi's tagline in 80s was the choice of the new generation you have to spend so much money to chase Trends so they use celebrities to endorse them what did Coke do they just
leaned on it's the real thing baby the real thing the original isn't that interesting Pepsi chased something Coke leaned into who they were okay so it's the real thing that's their tagline so when you're seven up and you want to wedge your way into the Cola Wars what are you going to say
it's just like that take what they're known for and reframe them so when you're tired of doing what everybody else is doing why don't you give this a try and I love this I had to go into like the archives and dig this up the unnown isn't that good yes okay and then
there's my Microsoft circuit 2006 they're the dominant standard you know they're crushing the business world they're the thing that all serious professional business people use so before Apple became Apple in its reinvention of it they reposition the PC with This brilliant campaign and I read that this campaign irritated Bill Gates so much
that Steve would do this to his company you remember I'm a Mac I'm a PC so they reposition this dominant business force that captured 97% of the market at that time as old out of date bloated mess whatever it is uncool unhip and this really irritated Bill Gates so you know the advertising
is working when the CEO is upset so that's positioning or repositioning so just take a minute to think about this when you're trying to position your company your brand how are you going to be different relative to your competitors when we think of accounting firms what are the big dogs that you have
to fight against who PWC PWC okay P okay so you you know who they are do you know what the brand stands for what they're known for there you go Partners screwed up people that enter into it they get CRA yeah it's a big faceless organization Maybe and you're just going to be
one of many suit suits look like the PC there you go you could just steal this campaign I'm a I'm a small accountant that's PWC so you what you do is you reposition them you reframe it okay that's how you do it okay uh so when you when you're trying to figure out
how to do reposition you have to identify who is it that you're really competing against seriously when somebody's looking at you who are they considering other than you you can't get to too aspirational with this cuz it won't work because it has to resonate with that person all right so when you identify
the compet competition ask them ask yourself what are they known for the top three traits this helps if you're super observant it also helps if you're not how to use chat gbt you just write it in there okay and then the last part of this is to be anti whatever they are be
the opposite of them so you're going to ask people to make a choice do you want that big faceless thing or do you want someone who's going to care about your business who's going to stay up late at night worrying if you're going to make payroll which do you want I'm not saying
that's you I'm just talking out loud here okay okay so if we go on here the purpose of position is to reduce or outright eliminate competition when you're clear with what who you stand for who you stand against and what you're about your beliefs and your values and you behave in a consistent
way that's the point because we know when you're a company of one you don't compete on price anymore you command a premium so many of us that are in this Professional Service space we mistakenly believe that we'll win the the project by making it easy for them and in fact what we want
to do is we want to make it harder one of the harder the way that you make it harder to work with you is you create scarcity and you signal to the market I'm worth it there's a premium Now I want to pay more and I will wait in line to work with
you the room got really Gloom for some reason what happened was it yes command a premium I think we didn't get quite isn't that obvious though not always really talk to me about that um I think because a lot of times the first thing that comes to our head is price especially in
our industry yeah and I think when you're going to command a premium you have to really believe your premium and there's Industries where we struggle with that everybody struggles with how they believe in themselves so should we just throw away the deck and talk about mindset self confidence confidence it's all about it
is you know here's the thing about confidence though like what comes first the price of the confidence confidence it's up to you actually it's a trick question yeah I'm going to just tell you I'm sorry I'm going to run out of time we're I'm going to tell you a really quick story okay
I love helping people there's no time limit don't say that to me 4 hours later you're like yo don't get off the stage okay no time limit as long as my foot holds up and Hector says it's okay I go a little over okay thank you Godfather okay all right I'm tell you
a little story right so I love helping people and when I started making content of course people all over the Internet would just write and ask questions like answering and then I found out there's no time left to do any work I can't make new content all I'm doing is answering questions so
the way I stop people from asking me questions because I have a hard time saying no I'm a people pleas I'm middle child I'm I'm there I know I know you feel me okay all right okay we're there all right so I have a hard time saying no so I'm like what am
I going to do so I'm talking to my friend her name is Carrie and she works with a lot of coaches she pays a lot for coaching I've got limited experience with it she goes just charge them I'm like okay how much should I charge Carrie and she's like I don't know I'm
like um 250 an hour what do you think she she goes if you charge anything less than $500 an hour I would not respect you anymore I'm like damn all right but I was feeling really guilty about that if I charge $500 an hour I think these poor people on the internet are
not going to be able to afford me so I create the the the the link on the page and I'm like okay 500 bucks an hour and then when anybody asked me for a piece of advice I would just like here click on this link and then they stopped asking it was a
beautiful thing it solved my problem it prevented me from having to say no because I gave them the choice the Choice was you want advice you pay if you don't want advice no problem God bless you take care be well and so what worked originally stopped working because I got booked too much
so my time was all now taken up by doing these $500 things so I'm like that's not going to work I'm going to change it to 750 an hour and I think back in my days as working as a professional I would pay someone $750 a day and feel guilty for paying them
that much money and here I am I'm asking them for 750 an hour so of course people stop calling beautiful problem solved again except for they started booking me again I'm like this is just too little now I'm gonna go to $1,500 an hour same thing happened no one calls then everyone calls
so it's happening too much because coaching somebody oneon-one is mentally very exhausting I have to take a nap afterwards okay so I'm like that's it I'm tired of this $5,000 an hour I know you're like this guy this guy who does he think he is well who's going to pay for the Louie
you see what I'm saying that's I just priced so I can go shopping you understand okay I know you can connect with that all right okay so of course now no one calls it's like crickets but it's a positioning play I change it to $5,000 an hour because I don't want them to
book me I want them to buy a course or book me for an event so they can see the value at $1,500 an hour if I'm charging $10,000 for a course like why don't we just book you seven times it's better than this other thing it's a positioning play I'm forcing them okay
and then recently somebody booked me for 5,000 bucks an hour I'm like damn this is good life is good okay so price does communicate position so you have to be bold enough to say I'm worth this much and maybe some of you are not worth that much today and all you have to
do is you have to close the gap you develop what it is that you're doing you upskill you provide better service or you're more lenient when they ask for a little change here and there and we were talking about this last night at the party it's like how do you know you're going
to be uh profitable I said charge so much it doesn't even matter if they want to ask for something do it you know Blen would say this to me he's like charge enough money it's called the like the Friday night phone call at 6 PM or something if the phone rings at 6
pm on Friday and you can have call or ID are you happy to pick up the phone are you happy to pick up the phone now most of you are Friday 6 p.m. you're encroaching my personal space there's no boundaries but if you charge enough I pick up the phone how you KN
what do you need how can I help you is everything okay so I want to be put in that place where I don't care anymore what you ask me for and I'm not going to count the hours I don't even care I don't want to do time sheets I don't want to measure
anybody by the hours in which they work I only care about the outcome make sense all right premium pricing so you go shopping remember that okay let's talk a little bit about marketing okay so we talk about branding brand positioning what is marketing I love Seth godden's definition of this and it's a
beautiful way and and I think it's a different way than what we assume of marketing now a lot of people think marketing is advertising and advertising is marketing advertising is one tactic of marketing and advertising is like putting out a message on repeat invading your space over and over where you don't want
it to creep up that's advertising and advertising for a long time had worked it doesn't work anymore so Seth definition is marketing is generous Act of helping people get what they want not what you want it's the generous Act of helping people get what they want with no expectations so he goes deeper
so do something that matters for people who care so you have to find a group of people who are very passionate about something people are very passionate about hot sauce right they do there's a whole store in San Francisco all they have are hot sauce are people passionate about ketchup not so much
not so much that's why there aren't 85 varieties people are very very passionate about coffee they'll go to war in fact Duncan Nance um they came up with an ad that they're just called Duncan now against Starbucks you know what their ad was friends don't let friends drink Starbucks I know reframe attack
you can see this now it's like I've given you I don't know if it's the red pill but once you take the pill you can't unsee the stuff anymore so as you drive around you see Billboards or you're watching TV or you f through a magazine pay attention to how they're speaking to
you they understand you have a relationship with someone and they're home recers they come in and they wreck the relationship it's like cheaters they just wreck it okay so if we go a little bit deeper oh I'm sorry so sell to people who actually want to hear from you versus interrupting people who
don't that's the key people are looking for you right now people who need you who desperately want some help from you so pay attention to them versus the people you have to chase it goes on to say you know permission marketing is an invitation like people volunteer to to participate in a long-term
marketing campaign of increasing value it's a strange way to frame marketing isn't it permission marketing is where people volunteer to participate in a long-term marketing campaign of increasing value so first they meet you you have to deliver some value and as they go deeper and deeper into the relationship before they buy from
you you're giving them more and more value so that's when the S is happening in throughout that entire process so what you have to do is you have to develop a marketing curriculum think of it like an educator you have General broad information that excites them and then you go deeper and deeper
to the point in which you can give them that super detailed high value stuff because they're not ready for it up front but they'll need it at the end so there's three components to permission marketing it's is this anticipated am I looking forward to this is it personal and relevant to me if
it is then you're doing permission marketing correctly so there's um do you guys have you ever built a customer Journey map before okay um I I found the simplest explanation of this using three uh five letters a i DCA a i DCA and it's a variant to how you write headlines which is
Aida so the first thing you need to do is like how do I build awareness and when they become aware of my products or Services what do I need to do to capture their interest and as they go deeper and deeper into your marketing curriculum how do I create desire what what kind
of transformation is that they want and then you get into conversion now most people stop there I got the sale it's great but what what we all know is it's very hard to get a client it's easier to keep one so when you get a client you have to think about what is
it I need to do to deliver Delight such that they're so compelled to tell other people about what it is that I do that I've created an experience an emotional thing for them that resonates with them that they want to go and tell every single person every person in this room has done
this before where you've experienced something magical with a product or service and you feel so compelled to go on social media and share and tell all your friends somebody's coming in at from out of town where should I eat oh you got to go to this dist place where should I stay only
stay here never stay there you want to be that brand such that people are so passionate about what it is that you do that they tell their other business friends you need to work with Mary or Bob or Kate okay I think Ron and Hector had touched on this already the purpose of
a business is to do something right the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer Peter drer so there's a there's a little framework here I want to share with you about how you can start to understand brand and branding so that you have some clear actionable things I'm doing
pretty good on the slides here I think I I shouldn't say it because I always speak too soon okay so so what we need to understand is it always starts with a customer we talked about this a little bit yesterday about who is a customer and we have to create a new customer
if we want to be an Innovative company it's very difficult to sell or create a product to to a customer who doesn't want what you do it's very difficult you're not that persuasive I don't have those persuasive skills myself either and so oftentimes we think when we create a a customer Avatar customer
profile we focus too much on their demographics like their age their income their title where they live all the kind of data driven things but what we have to do is we have to get into the psychographics or beliefs values opinions because that shapes more of what we do than the other stuff
okay I'm not going to spend time working on the customer profile or the buyer Persona or whatever because you can literally go on chat GPT and type that up have you guys done that before you haven't it's wonderful okay I don't know the resource right now but there's a gentleman who's gone through
and created some incredible scripts that there's um a plugin that you can get all you have to do is tell it what you make and what city and it creates the most incredible customer profile it's wild it is wild and and he made a YouTube video of this and I tested I was
like wow this is pretty cool but you can literally type in to chaty BT um create a user Persona customer profile buyer Persona something like that for someone who's looking for an accounting service in uh Tampa who is female over 40 and give it some information Don't Let It Go Wild on you
and see what it says and if that Rings true to you then you can just use that as the foundation it's going to already identify the demographics and psychographics for you because chat already knows how to do this so the the framework looks something like this like oops let me go back one
sorry so this is one way if you you can look at it understand your customers what value that you're going to create for them the transformation the change that you're going to create the result and then you just need to add two things the tone of voice and the look and feel so
if I lay it like this it's a little bit easier to understand okay yes yes the value prop in our industry like can I he your value for you or what it means to you when you what what you say sure I'll take a whiteboard um okay if you understand the needs of
the customer the transformation they seek in their life the pain points their challenges then your your value prop is going to be the solution to that we're building bridges so you have a the current state which you're in all of you are in a current state right now right and then there's the
desired State what is your desired State everybody we'll do this together is this a marker that works yeah take the take the ones that I'm not allowed to write with okay okay so you have current state and you have desired state or desired future State okay and there's usually something that's blocking them
you can think of this as a wall something like that okay what is happening let's just talk about the people in this room a couple days ago you were not here you're doing what you do you've taken time off work your family your life to be here because you desire some kind of
transformation yes okay what transformation do you desire now I'm opening can of worms because maybe the workshop is align towards us or it's not I don't know but we would start here okay so let's talk about that everybody can see this okay it's a good spot for it okay so you're here you're
an accounting firm I assume almost all of you there's a couple anomalies in the room there's a realtor and a graphic designer I think okay what is the desired future State why did you come here what is it that you wanted to happen in your life sub subscription you want to understand subscription
models I want to be subcription model yes and what are you right now um what's commonly known as value prices monthly pricing monthly pricing really how's that different subscription is scopeless and what I do is scop okay so you so there's just I think a small difference then except the big price okay
can you share okay I'm to in trouble I saw Ron over there now I'm all nervous I'm like damn I'm going to say something he's like Yo dude that's not correct that's factually incorrect right now he's going to cancel me all right I'm going to pretend like he's not here and Ron and
Hector Hector is not here either okay so we'll just say things that I get in trouble get a refund okay I already got paid so monthly pricing what do you charge for monthly pricing on a typical client 1500 1500 okay there's no reaction in the room it's like woo or good good that's
pretty good pretty good she doing all right we'll shop later depends it depends 1500 bucks a month and there's scope right and so I think Ron's like if you can do something there's unlimited scope okay what price would you have to charge so that you don't care what they ask for is that
enough okay that's a big jump people already impress of the 1500 you're going for a 10K she going for the kill I like that okay so let me ask you something what's stopping you from doing this today confidence okay anything else um to some extent a knowledge I have extensive extensive knowledge but
not can we get her the mic please yes sir thank you oh confidence knowledge what else it's not yeah but I have I don't have accounting accounting knowledge I have lots of business experience and and confidence but the accounting part throws me are you the legal in tax person no oh sorry I'm
all confused everything but I do not do tax or legal okay okay so confidence and knowledge okay yeah how will you acquire this knowledge going to conferences reading going to conferences reading listening conferences okay what do you need knowledge in again accounting you're not an accountant depends who you ask what's your definition
today who do you want me to be I mean it's I didn't know it was going to be that kind of conversation bookkeeping to accounting and people are you know wait is that the same thing no okay let's talk about it all right we'll make this so it's relatable to everybody you want
something you can't get it what are what are barriers to you getting that and then so you're going to seek out Solutions so I'm going to assume that Hector and Carlos have designed a curriculum for you in the last or the day and today so that you're going to get that knowledge piece
that you need the confidence is going to have to come from some other place okay now I've been thinking about this a lot about confidence I think what happens is when people say they need confidence they need something very specific do you know what they need do need more experience what do they
need Val validation how do you get validation you got to do it so it's a chicken and egg thing again that's problematic taking a risk so I've been thinking about this and you guys tell me if I'm thinking about it correctly because I'm not even convinced myself which is I think we're all
just looking for permission from somebody it's really weird it's like when we say we want confidence it's like somebody in your life is going to say you can can do what's your name again Teresa somebody's going to say Teresa you got this girl you don't need all this other stuff just ask for
it so for me in my story luckily it kind of ties together here I was like I'm going to just give away my advice for free and car's like no you're not so she gave me permission to charge to feel okay about the guilt that or shame that I have for charging people
for things I want to do for them and it just took that initial push there's nothing real or tangible about it just some fool says go ahead and do this you donkey I'm like okay I'll do it yeah right so you're waiting for that permission from somebody who is that somebody well then
why are you holding yourself back that's what we do yeah like this is like a an AA meeting now huh yeah you know I love that I love you that you say it's the industry did the industry call you last tonight didn't did the industry send you a book and say do not
do this no but the thing is that we are framed into that industry uh like wheel every single day and we are just in our brains we have that chip Incorporated so if you're not a CPA then you're not you don't have that confidence or you're not confidence enough okay well that's attainable
though you just go to school and you can get your CPA sure but you you still have that business running you know what I mean like it's no okay so wait wait hold on before you take off my time because I'm just mindful of time I just want to say this this happens
everywhere I go they said it can't be done and every time I'm like who they who they and no one can name the they the they do not exist you know who they are you you see that person every single day you look at this person in a mirror it's you I have
design students like Chris I didn't know we could do this when somebody else does something Innovative I'm like well who told you you couldn't do it well we were told this I'm like who who Who's the they they can never name the they I'm going to make a shirt who they and you
understand it gives us permission to not go for what we want and we accept it from our colleagues but we shouldn't we should do what we know we should do you know the thing about creative folks they don't live in the real world they live in the world of their imagination and then
the real world aligns to that are you creative I'm yes I'm marketing I all my okay go marketing yes it works yes you all are yes you all are so let's get rid of the day you can do whatever it is you want you can say you know it's going to be 10
grand and you can get a lot of NOS just like I got a lot of NOS until you get a yes and you're like what took me so long what permission whose permission was I seeking so give yourself the permission slip say I can do this I will do this I'm doing it
now I I talked about this this morning decide and you will be decide and you will be stop letting someone else tell you what you are decide it and be it fake it till you make it okay let me ask you guys this question okay would you prefer to be in this state
of charging $1,500 an hour or or whatever a month and then people are asking you for a little extra you're like uh that's out of scope we don't have clear boundaries I need to charge you more do you want that kind of relationship or would you rather just charge whatever you're going to
charge and attract the kind of person is like you know what I have a $3 million problem $10,000 a month ain't nothing please take care of my business so I can sleep better at night take care of my business so that I don't have to like tell my wife things aren't working or
my husband the business is broken what kind of relationship do you want see so this is a really weird thing and it's hard for I think for some of you to understand this when you charge so much money you attract a different kind of buyer a buyer believes in you so that when
you say uh jump over that fence they just jump because it cost them so much to talk to you they're just going to do it so you're creating that barrier for people who aren't Believers and the price is that barrier there's other things you can do but I'm going to keep moving on
here all right you're welcome you're welcome okay so when we look at this like what is your value prop what kinds of solution you're going to provide to people the benefits the impact that you're going to create and that's an emotional Thing versus the feature so many of us get caught up in
the feature it's like well you have access to someone 24 hours a day that's a feature sleep better at night that's a benefit uh having a Clear Vision for the future that's a benefit getting your spouse off your back that's a definite benefit okay so I'm going to show you some example or
an example here okay so remember this diagram we're going to go back here just remember this if you want to take a picture of it because we want to move forward and then you're going to see how this plugs in I'm going to show you one example here when take it through and
then I'm almost out of time okay so the Harley-Davidson Motorcycle company is a very clear brand it's an iconic American brand or it used to be so I'm going to ask you this question what is the value proposition the primary benefit to the customer think emotional not logic status what kind of status
can you expand whoever said status who said status okay status what kind of status what are we talking about amongst their peers but can you articulate we understand status amongst our peers but what kind of status is it uh they're cool they they're cool okay cool yeah I'll work with that okay let's
keep going let's bounce around it's a community what kind of community you can go to any City and you know there's a Harley Davidson store and you can wear a harleydavidson shirt anywhere like oh yeah I've been to that City okay all right go ahead I just the other day um Harley came
up beside us at a stoplight my husband and I Harley came up at the light on the other side and they did this it was we used to do that junior high do you still do that it's like what's up what's up right we we can't boys will still be boys you can't
get rid of that like a club it's a club it is fingers as we pass people put your two you put your two fingers as you ride by other Riders come the other way that's I love that how you say it with your accent say it one more time what say what how
to ride by and give it that away did she did she say it like that or yeah she did I love that I'm celebrating you thank you thank you okay so here's what I know about Harley Davidson motorcycles I've never been on a motorcycle they're freaking loud and obnoxious they say look at
me and hear me as I come and as I go and when it's 3: in the morning I'm like God dang it I'm trying to sleep here right so like I don't give an f what you think that's their attitude so here's here's the value prop it's a form of self-expression on two
wheels it's the promise of Adventure this Freedom this Independence like it takes us back to maybe when we're riding horses like cowboy and cowg girls roaming the PLS right Outlaw culture everybody tries to dress a certain way leather spikes skulls Mohawks whatever tattoos topl toplet okay that's a different conference okay you know
they they're going to fight the system like Stick it to the Man we're going to reclaim the road these are all the value props and it definitely makes a loud statement literally and figuratively make sense notice no horsepower no 0 to 60 no nothing that's the value prop when you understand what triggers
us to buy it's emotional so we have to speak the language of emotion because when you speak that all of a sudden something happens inside of us like you get me you understand me okay how does the brand sound to the customer so what is the tone of voice tough we're out of
ideas that was tough act to follow somebody else L loud for sure rall rule Challenger rule breaker maybe criminal like we got to go to the extreme right Outlaws Robin Hood helping others while they're breaking I don't get that from a Harley-Davidson person but if you if you say so that's fine indant
indignant okay all right so what we want to do is when you're working on your brand you want to come up with a bunch of words and we don't judge we just create and part of the exercise usually is you write as many words as possible without fear of judgment so you write
a 100 words what's our tone of voice what's our value prop so I just made up some it's the tone of voice is controversial rebellious we want to challenge the status quo edgy Outlaw hardcore defiant unconventional and you want to skip the easy words the first 10 words that you come up with
are going to be super generic so you got to push past the generic words so the idea usually when we facilitate this with companies is whatever words they write the first 10 we just cross them off and say we cannot use those words because they'll say like Innovative right like every company's Innovative
all of a sudden come on push pass the p a okay what does the brand look and feel like so now we get into the visual aspects and we try to come up with words that are visual that you can translate into a language so here we say like maybe it's distress it's
raw this unpolished unvarnished thing it's authentic Counter Culture rugged American masculine and unpretentious sort of so then what we do is we go back to our list and we pick the two words the two words that we feel like most resonate with what we're trying to do so here's the list again just
to show you how this works this is like one of those cooking shows like I already made the pizza for you okay so I just chose two words like rebellious and passionate that would be the tone of voice for Harley-Davidson then when we looked at the the look and feel we say distress
and counterculture make sense so far all right cool you see the diagram now so here's the value prop self-expression the promise of Adventure and Freedom the voice and the tone or tone of voice is is rebellious and passionate and the looking feels distress counterculture so you might be sitting there thinking um so
what is does that look like man so this is the beauty of the internet you just gather images and you start to curate and sort out what that looks like so you build a mood board and if I click it I should build so if you if you employ designers or people are
more visually oriented you give them those two words and say hey go on Pinterest or behance or Instagram and just find things that capture this feeling and they're going to come up with a bunch of images some fit some don't don't worry that's part of the process and then through what you guys
do you curate like this feels right to me and then you elate the others and if you don't have enough you say these ones really feel right find more and they can do that and so through this process of curating and opening it up and and Contracting it you'll find and land on
a visual language and then you can search for some other images photography Styles yeah it does I I just look for images that follow the words right okay so we're going to put this together now and one of the things that we sort of dipped into Yesterday is the language like language transform
so choosing the right language and coming up with words to to redefine things so when you study Cults and Brands and brand tribes they're very cult-like a brand cult right uh somebody recommended I watch this series you don't need to watch it it's it's a series on Netflix called how to become a
cult leader I watched it it's horrible and amazing at the same time okay cuz you're trying to build a cult-like connection with people except for you're benevolent you're not going to steal people's money but one of the things I saw was they have a secret language to let you know you're in the
cult right and if every brand that you're interested in study the language that they use and you'll start to see this so in one of the Cults um what is the the group where they all like committed suicide cuz they thought they're going to go to the spaceship and they weren't Nikes Heaven's
Gate so the Heaven's Gate people devises it's kind of diabolical how they did this they started to redefine words that we use this is not your body it's a vessel and they would describe everything this is not your brain this is not your soul it's something and they had a new word for
everything and when the people used the words that they created they knew they were in and this is what brands do you notice how like um Adidas their soul technology they don't just call like Soul they call adiprene and Nike has like uh all kinds of words for like their Technologies their Fabrics
there's two things that are valuable one is you make people use your language and two you can trademark it or patent it and it's valuable so now you have IP so if you created some kind of framework or system for accounting or the way that you diagnose a client's problems business problems give
it a name the name should relate to your brand make sense so now you're creating brand assets all right The Secret Language and so this agency uh called wolves they created this campaign that I thought was really clever and they use this hashtag roll your own clearly there's a play on words here
you guys know what I'm talking about right don't all be all innocent with me roll your own so this is one of the ads they have so this to a Harley-Davidson owner is a morning donut see they make something you know and they reframe it as something else and it speaks two languages
there it's pretty clever so the little copy says Raise Hell before lunch so they're reinforcing that raise hell these are troublemakers that are lawyers who make mid6 figures you know what kind of Outlaw is that okay here's another one lap dance right so lap dance we associate with a certain thing they reframe
it as something totally different yeah the LA you get it you know marot most people just do that in their mind I love that you just say it out loud I love that I love that you need to be in every audience that I'm at and bring 35 of your friends okay so
it's like Place mom told you not to go lap dance again the play on words and it's done with such few like an economy of words it's beautiful here's the last one the black market okay and and the line here I need to read this to you it says 99 bucks any less
and you could be arrested see the language in which they use cuz this is Outlaw criminal culture it's not real but it's what you want to feel you know mid mid midlife crisis it's like oh I need to do something all right so I have one more example to share with you um
and it's the ugly truth about being ugly okay so I normally never go grocery shopping my wife does I sit in the car and the reason why I sit in the car is cuz she don't want to be rough rushed this just the way it is I'm like babe you want this what's
your list I got you she goes you're ruining this I want to enjoy this I'm like enjoy what what is there to enjoy the experience you clearly don't understand so I actually went in one day and was like I think it was a Whole Foods it was a Whole Foods and I'm walking
by and I just see this like display of nuts and fruit dried fruit and something spoke to me I walked by this package just hello I'm ugly and first I said I I read it as you ugly so it's I stopped like you talking to me you know I knew I should have
wor the shirt I knew it so I started picking up the package I started reading it and I was just in just infatuated with this thing the way it spoke to me I had to buy it I I could not leave the store without buying this thing now I'm going to read to
you what's on the package and I want you to tell me what's working this is the last thing I'm going to get off the stage okay so here we go and before that I'm going to just ask you to think about three things um there's a guy name is Brandon Kane he wrote
this book hooko he grew a million followers in one month I got to interview him and he shared all these Concepts some of it white hat some of it black hat some gray hat but whatever so the thing that he says is people process things the majority of people process things through facts
feelings and fun so if you only give them facts you're leaving out two-thirds of the population if you're only doing fun or feelings you're leaving every out so you try to in your messaging in your videos in your communication to include three things you have the best chance of grabbing the broadest audience
into your content make sense so if you're posting content like did you know Uncle Sam did this and it's 2.7% you've lost two-thirds of the population but do you know if you do this you can actually go buy that house boat or whatever you wanted to buy oh you brought some fun back
into it now imagine your kids jumping off the deck of that house boat that's a feeling so you bring those three things together and you can communicate to the brightest group of people all right so I'm going to read this to you I want you to pay attention to the three FS facts
fun feelings yeah and I'm going to ask you some questions here so pay attention I know you guys are very good at test taking here we go this does not work well with designers so I'll read the copy beautiful on the inside 100% upcycled peaches ugly fruit is thrown out because of the
way it looks but you should never judge a fruit by its cover you are preventing 2 and a/4 pound of ugly fruit from becoming waste because more peaches are thrown away in California than the state of Georgia produces annually that's think about that pit happens well we do our best to remove all
the pit traces from our product sometimes Mother Nature just won't let go okay that's the copy so how did the ugly company that's what they're called turn an unremarkable boring ho product into a charismatic brand so I'm going to ask you these questions now okay and this meant to be interactive who do
you think they are targeting and why because we start with a customer who are they targeting and why based on what I just read to youal environmentalists yeah envir yeah people that are health conscious uh what climate conscious you know all these yeah those people those people nature freaks nature freaks the lip
tards is that what we're talking about here Tree Huggers okay people like don't feel like they fit in why do you say that um because um the on the first you have to go back a couple slides you have to remember um just you know beautiful on the inside ugly on the outside
okay did that speak to you no I'm she's like I mean we can all identify with that on what is your name Rachel stand up Rachel just spin around stand up stand up stand up stand up take come on stand up Rachel stand up spin around so everybody can see you okay this
side to this side this side give him give him a full 360 okay so okay have a seat that's all we need you for so she's like honey are you seeing this clearly clearly not for me asking for a friend she says some point in our lives can yes because maybe you're a
late bloomer and maybe you never bloomed who knows we can relate to that don't judge a fruit by its cover they took a common expression don't judge a book by its cover and this is a powerful marketing message take things that people already know and just reframe it don't judge a fruit by
its cover and we if you were ever bullied if you ever felt like left out made fun of Mean Girls you know like I feel that that's a feeling there okay right here homeschooler moms what wait say say homeschooler moms what is it they targeting homeschooler moms yes that's very specific yes how
come I'm a homeschooler mom are you projecting what's going on well I'm a homeschooler mom but I'm not your original homeschooler mom because I'm a more of a business and then I ended up in this cult we are a cult yes the county cult well yeah kind of if you go into the
homeschooling Environ you have to be like your brain has to be designed to wake up every morning and say I'm not damaging my kids I'm just helping them grow what are they doing to attract the non-traditional homeschooler mom well the whole idea behind it is that a homeschooler moms will go for something
that is totally different than what is out there okay we don't go for the Doritos or the Cheetos we go for something that is totally different perfect okay let's take one more I was also thinking the silky mom have you heard of this no the silky there's the silky mom the scrunchie mom
the silky mom is the mom who uses disposable diapers who buys everything organic kind of building on what Vanessa was saying and then the scrunchie mom is the mom that doesn't care about screen time and gives the Doritos and there's also that's a crunchy mom and then the scrunchy mom but I think
this is probably the silky or the scrunchy Mom that's really interesting cuz I'm neither a woman nor a mom and I I bought it is this weird maybe I need to explore identifies she no I'm just kidding okay all right so let's keep going okay so we want to pay attention any time
anything grabs your attention stop take a moment observe process analyze reflect because that's a lesson for you the whole world is your classroom this is what I do because I'm a dork I just see things I'm like oh that's what's what's happening to me right now what am I feeling why am I
buying this and how do I tell this story and use this in other things how do I teach other people this here's the second question how would you describe the vibe of the ugly company it's fun hipster hip in your face in your face mindful mindful those are excellent so we can reverse
engineer the brand right now to a culture it says nothing added nothing added it talks to this culture that I grew up with when it was like no GMO no gluten like glutenfree and this and that and everything is like water instead of having some so right it's nothing okay beautiful you see
how this game works here I got a couple more questions for you what choices in design color and typography reinforce this Vibe so there's a Vibe A vibe is a feeling so now we need to connect it to something more tangible we have to check in with ourselves and this is something that
happens a lot it's not just you guys we project you're a homeschooled mom so you're like it's for homeschooled moms you see how that works some tech bro will be like it's for Tech Bros so we have to make sure that our observations are connected to things things that we actually see so
we can deconstruct and create our own recipe makes sense right okay so what is it that they've chosen to do just with the visual aspects that communicate you about this vibe that they have it's bright font it looks like what looks like a it looks like a peach okay cuz it's peach colored
yeah the font is very pretty for the word ugly yes so it's a jxap position this is really important there's playing to type and there's playing against type have you heard that expression before so they're playing against type right now yes okay it's kind of interesting how she interpreted that she had a
whole voice in a Persona change did you see that hello hello I'm ugly can you help me can you help it's like yeah well the choice innocent you're a little innocent yeah cuz it's this mon line cursive script type face that they're using so now we know the type faces that you choose
have personality this is why you need to hire designers by the way because you don't know this there a secret language we all understand okay so be very conscientious like why am I feeling this right now what is it that's happening to me the really cool thing is you don't have to be
a designer to be able to do any of this you just go find a brand a package that you like go to airan go to Whole Foods go to one of those upscale ones where they really curate the packages and the products that they sell something speaks to you just take it and
deconstruct it and make your brand like that I I actually give this assignment to people literally do this right I I can't remember but there was a a coffee company that was like death coffee I'm like that's the interesting they had this crazy visual language with skulls on I'm like let's go and
there's liquid death there's all kinds of stuff right just find a package cuz the package has lots of things has colors textures uh it has Type faces and it has a language and a tone of voice take it deconstruct it use it you don't have to reinvent this stuff okay all right I'm
going to skip this um so was there a line of copy that you connected with yes which one beautiful beautiful on the inside okay so I would have bought it just to see what it's beautiful on the inside okay that's good just remember that yeah like what's up is there there's a lot
of intentionality behind this isn't there it just didn't like fall out of like word you know what I mean or Excel somebody really thought this through yes the word ugly is the prominent thing ugly is prominent it's it's actually taking a weakness and making it a strength you see that right there okay
so this thing that you said must be beautiful on the inside I'm going to tell you right now you want to say something oh just also just the Beautiful on the inside they've got they've got the arrows pointing directly at it which are maybe the direction to rip it open but also focuses
your attention on the Beautiful on the inside so see me hey good pickup on that is are you the first gentleman to use the microphone today I believe you are well done we're representing the men in the room well done well done all right we feel seene okay you know what upcycled means
no it's not wait let I want to her to sweat a little bit I don't have the mic what is the difference between upcycled and recycled they're two different words for a reason because you're reusing it but not from trash no no all the all the granola women in here know exactly what
upcycle means it's a different thing recycle you want to say it I know what I'm I believe I know um well they are can you hold the mic what's that hold the mic oh yeah well they're talking about uh how they throw away this fruit so instead of throwing away they're app cycling
they're they're yeah everybody's really smart when they don't have the microphone you know let her finish let her hangers up you know it's a you know they say one man's trash is another man it's another man's trash it's starting to fall apart right I don't know keep going that's what I believe um
they're trying to say here they're upcycling the fruit I love this I love this you know you you you you have a perception of accountants and you think they're all introverted they're not they grab the mic before they even have the answer I know you know what I mean I love this I
I love it you know what I mean isn't this wonderful I know I know no yeah this this group of weirdos I love it okay recycle you use something it becomes trash and they pull it out of the trash and they re uh they break it down and renew it is a whole
chemical process upcycles it doesn't even enter the trash we find a new life for it okay so if you take a pair of shoes that are used you break it down there's a lot of energy and chemicals that have to happen before you could recycle it upcycles they never entered the trash to
begin with it's a powerful concept upcycling okay somebody's like I knew it it was me I was going to say it is that is that what happened over here you okay I'm I'm like three hours over time let me just keep moving on okay remember they said beautiful on the inside I opened
it up it ain't beautiful at all okay it's remarkable not because of the product itself okay they're tiny little squares you're not getting big pieces of fruit because this is the stuff they throw away right okay I think Ron said this yesterday you're not selling your service you're selling an outcome they're not
selling you their fruit they're selling you a feeling I feel better when I buy this product it's good for you it's not healthy for your mind dried fruit is dried fruit okay and this dried fruit is pretty ugly okay so let's look at the strategy here you turn a weakness into a strength
you turn into a whole brand you call yourselves ugly you don't avoid it right I used to live in Seattle above Pike's Market and there's a strip bar across the street and every day I look at the window and they had this beautiful slug on says 39 beautiful women and one ugly one
I was like there's truth in advertising here and that's compelling to me versus like the world's best you know I love that it's something like that right so they take trash and they turn into treasure that's what you're saying and they turn your guilt into gold I'm saying something else okay please share
you're also okay I don't know if you know anything about the grocery industry but everything in the in the produce section is artfully arranged and shiny and there's a lot of waste and so a lot of people don't want that so by buying this you're buying not that does that make sense you're
buying not that what is that you're choosing you're you're choosing to not buy that conventional system of buying produce yes we're saying the same thing I was trying where we're arguing here no listen I but I I didn't I don't know if if we caught that but um I think that like some
per people purposefully try to avoid that type of thing so they'll only buy this um alternative kind of item is that is that what we're saying yes that's what we're saying okay okay when you go to Whole Foods and Air1 you're already stepping into people who already made that decision for you it's
very hard it's the difference like between that in Walmart or tar Shay you know it's very different that's why she likes to shop there she's like it's an experience babe I'm like okay I get you sort of I think computers and it's the same feeling I'm like okay I get you now all
right so the three FS okay so we're going to show you fact fact feeling and fun 2.2 uh two and a qu pounds of waste that's a fact California throws out more peaches than Georgia makes peaches fact that's powerful I didn't know that Justin Bieber told me I get my peaches from Georgia
baby right and my weed from California okay and they they use this line sorry I'm in a mood judging on appearance judging on appearance man that's rough that's a feeling if you ever felt that way I'm going to connect it's going to resonate and then pit happens we know they don't mean to
say pit happens they're just having a little fun they're like we don't take ourselves seriously neither should you all right so there you are turn a weakness into a strength oh sorry personality they humanize their brand they connect with you it's just not another company that makes fruit I looked them up it's
like some big dude like that you wouldn't expect that makes this it's his company and they make it super relatable and the reason why you need to do this is because Brands and personality okay my friend yo Santos who's a brilliant brander she said this people don't fall in love with corporations they
fall in love with personalities I want to know there's a human behind that not a faceless entity all right so here we are summary um number one get clear on who you serve you want to create a customer you want to keep the customer so what you need to do is you need
to build a strong and Clear customer profile or a buyer Persona chaty PT can help you if you don't know how to do this and when you are able to create the Persona figure out what they want and what they need align your value proposition to the transformation to desired future state that
they want I see that you want this I see this is where you're stuck I'm going to deliver this to you it doesn't need to be more complicated than that they have a want and a need give them what they want a need and speak in a tone of voice that your audience
resonates with match the look and feel and then last part the hardest part is to behave in a consistent manner throughout the entire customer Journey from the awareness stage to the conversion so they can become advocates for you so that out there selling it for you how do I know this works the
ugly company paid me exactly $0 to tell you their story to be their customer they paid me$ zerar and here I am on stages all over the world telling people their story that's how powerful a brand can be and I believe that's what you should want does that make sense is anybody out
there telling your story on the stage no we have some I who said that yet I love it so she's ready she she don't need any more confidence she got it okay okay so some resources you guys want it here it is and that's that's all I got so you won't take pictures
cuz Hector said he'll give it to you right all right yeah thank you my time's up thanks everybody I just finished delivering my keynote into a wonderful receptive audience it's a room full of accountants by by their response and how they were laughing and participating you wouldn't even know so I think often
times we put accountants in a very specific box they're quiet they're introverted they're very numbers and numbers driven and they don't have a sense of humor nothing could be less true these guys were incredible they brought such great energy and they they went with me and they allowed me to play with them
and I just enjoyed my time here the secret to everything that I was saying is you've got to be able to apply it so we become really good observers of life and study Brands and how they communicate and how they hook us in we're able to deconstruct that that we can apply it
to ourselves so if you weren't able to make it to the conference I'm going to give you this one little hack go out to a high-end grocery store find a package a product or something that speaks to you the colors the topography the messaging and just buy that go home consume it understand
what what makes it what it is the messaging the design the topography the language and use that as a guide for your own brand you don't have to reinvent yourself you don't have to make new things a non-creative person can walk into the store find something that works and use that as a
template or a foundation for what they're going to do do that this is what they come for they come to have a transformation be able to change their state you're in a box right now you need to get out of it and the only way that you can do that as far as
I know is invest in yourself conferences workshops books videos invest in yourself and create the kind of transformation that you [Music] desire
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