Invisible Details

Transaction is one of the building blocks of civilization. Business and commerce is built on transaction, where two parties participate in a trade that they both deem fair. When we think about currency, it’s easy to think about money, gold, or other things that are physical, but there’s another currency that every human being has: time. There’s an old saying that says, “Time is money”, but in reality, they are not the same thing. Time can be traded for money, and vice versa. As a brand, it can be easy to think that our biggest asset is money, because it allows us to grow and expand—but without a healthy view of time, money is irrelevant. On today’s episode, we’re going to explore the relationship between time and money and how skill and value come into the conversation.

At the beginning of every project, it’s easy to manage all of the things that need to get done. A small business is no problem when it’s just an idea. Then the customers begin to show up. The taxes need to be filed. Inventory needs to be sorted, labeled, and shipped. Before you know it, everything has started to slip through your fingers because someone told you that “wearing a lot of hats” was admirable. As your brand grows, there will be more responsibilities and moving parts to attend to. Your time will be spread thin if you’re not careful. You need to focus on the things that really matter and will move your brand goals forward. In today’s episode, we’ll be talking about how to manage your productivity levels and maintain balance, while also looking at a few ideas on how to scale your brand in a healthy way.

Brands are built by and for people, which means at some point your brand will necessarily need to interact with other people. At some point, you're going to start receiving feedback. No matter what your brand is, there will be people who love your brand and people who don't. Some will give you a "thumbs up" on your post, others might leave a nasty comment, while others yet simply ignore the hard work you've put in. Have you noticed it's easy to base the worth and value of our brands on the opinions of others? The positive feedback makes us feel great, while negative feedback makes us doubt everything we do. Yet feedback is inevitable. It's going to come whether you want it or not. The way you handle and use feedback is vital for the health of your brand, even if it’s negative. In this episode we talk about the various forms of feedback and how to deal with it when it comes.

It can be absolutely heartbreaking to watch a business go under. Knowing that someone poured their heart and soul into something that ended up going out of business is very sobering. Running a business is difficult. Working to sustain a brand can be the most rewarding thing, but it can also be the most exhausting thing. One day you feel like you're on top of the world, and the next you realize that you have no idea how to pay the bills next month. It’s been said 9 out of 10 businesses fail in the first year, and out of the ones that remained, 4 out of 5 fail in the first five years. Are these businesses failures? Maybe. Maybe not. In this episode, we talk about why your failed brand doesn't have to be a failure, and that it is ultimately what you make of it.

A healthy brand is truly a balancing act. On one side, you have to actually execute on your idea and build a sustainable brand structure, creating and focusing on building a healthy business. On the other side, a healthy business doesn’t matter if nobody knows about it. There are plenty of articles online saying to build an audience, gather a list, and always create content. But if that focus on outside attention leaves you neglecting the structure and cohesiveness of your brand behind the scenes, it might be time for a re-evaluation. We often refer to the brand as a personality on this show, with an outward expression of what’s happening on the inside. Yet if one is neglected, it can have a negative impact on the other. In today’s episode, we talk about how to evaluate whether or not you’re focusing too heavily on one side or the other, and how to know when to work more on the internal health or the external reach of your brand.

The art of balancing short and long term goals can be tricky. It’s easier to look out a few days, weeks, or even months than it is to estimate where you want to be in the next few years. Think about who you were ten years ago. How have you changed? How has your direction in life evolved? Building a brand is more than just trying to maintain a profit through the next few months. It’s about deciding where you want to be and working hard to get there. It is a constant evaluation and forward motion to get to what’s next. In today’s episode we’re going to talk about setting short and long term goals, how to work backwards from where you want to be, and dreaming bigger.

Billions of people around the world are using the internet every day. New sites are created, new social platforms are launched, and at every turn we are asked to enter in our usernames and passwords for a new account. Unless you have an uncommon name, it can be very difficult to get the same username on every platform you sign up for. How many of us have tried to sign up with our usual username, and then realized that someone else already had it? It may seem like a strange subject, but there are quite a few reasons to make sure that you have a consistent username across the many websites and platforms you connect with your audience on. In this episode we talk about preparing, personalizing, and managing usernames online for better consistency, and what to do if it's nearly impossible to have a consistent username.

In most cases, a brand has a single tier with one mission, purpose, and set of values. The brand foundation is where the products stem from, how the services are handled, and points everything back to the parent brand. Sometimes a product has the ability to stand on its own, to create a personality above and beyond the brand it comes from. It develops its own mission, purpose, and values, and tells its own story. Not everyone should have a sub-brand, but there are some instances where it might be beneficial to create one. Brand is all about personality and connecting with your audience on a deeper level. A sub-brand is about focusing into your audience and offering a segment of those people something different. In this episode, we dive into brand architecture and talk about when you might consider developing a sub-brand.

Building a successful brand is all about understanding people. The most successful companies in the world are there because they strategize and think deeply about how people are going to connect with their brand. Without human connection, your brand has nothing. There’s no one to read your content, buy your products, sign up for your membership, or employ you to solve their problem. Humans want to connect with other humans. One of the most fundamental methods of connecting with people is through story. We tell stories all day long, and not just historical or fictional stories, but even relating to people about how our days went, or what our goals are for the future. Special guest Jeff Urke joins the show to talk about the elements of storytelling, why story is important in human connection, and how designing stories can help push your brand even further.

News flash: You’re probably not the only person in the world doing what you’re doing. What sets you apart? Why should someone pay money for your product or service when they could just find someone cheaper? Building a brand is about fostering an identity and finding a place in this world. It’s about finding what makes you tick and what sort of expression you want to display. Part of that expression is determining what makes you unique. As someone in a noisy, brand-saturated world, how are we supposed to stand out when it seems like everyone else is doing something similar? In this episode, we’ll be talking about how to figure out what your unique advantage is and how to leverage it to make your brand stand out.

We’ve all heard the saying “jack of all trades, master of none”, and usually when people say it, they wear it as a badge of honor. As a brand, the biggest asset you have with your audience is trust. Without trust, you have nothing. Building trust takes a lot of work, and it certainly doesn’t come easy. Specialization gives you the edge to not only build trust in your field, but also to deepen the specific skills that your brand requires. Focusing on becoming incredible in your niche allows you to become the best, which ultimately builds the trust you need. In this episode, we talk about how specialization builds trust, strengthens your specific skills, and why narrowing your focus will take your brand further.

Whether you’re a designer who decides to give your website an overhaul every couple of months or a business owner who is never satisfied with the last set of print materials you had made, we have a message for you: stop redesigning everything. It’s one thing to have a business card that needs a redesign, but it’s another to wake up every six months and decide to redesign everything from the ground up. There are lots of reasons to conduct a redesign of a website, product, or print materials, but before anything begins, it’s time to take a moment and consider what really needs to happen. If you're a chronic re-designer or you find yourself never satisfied with the latest published iteration, this episode is for you.

You might remember what it felt like when you just got started: the rush of adrenaline when you launched, the feeling of your first order, the plans you laid out for your first years of business. But now it seems like it’s stagnated, and what you used to be happy to wake up for is difficult to get excited about. It’s a tough place to be. Stagnation is the enemy of progress, and if you're feeling like your business, passion, or goals have slowed to a crawl, it's time to do some evaluation. In this episode we talk about strain, burnout, and evaluating what has caused you to lose the momentum you started out with.

When it comes to building a brand experience, is it better to build your own platform or to use someone else's? There are a lot of bigger platforms claiming to have everything you need, from product drop-shipping services to third-party apps, rental spaces to all-in-one design solutions. Building your brand on another platform has its benefits, but it also has its costs. When you build your own platform, you control the entire experience. You make all of the decisions, you control the time table, and you can fully customize everything your customer experiences. Of course, this takes a lot of time, capital, and infrastructure. In this episode, we look at what a platform is and how you can leverage your platform to enhance your audience's experience, whether you use your own or a third-party platform.

It's easy to want to update the look of your brand or to make sure that you're up to date with the latest visual trends, but rebranding is more than just slapping a fresh coat of paint on a building and calling it good. There are a lot of stories of big brands spending millions of dollars on rebranding their image, only to realize that they made a huge mistake. Some have even reverted to their old brand identity! Rebranding can be exciting, but it can also lead to unwanted outcomes if not handled correctly. Rebranding is more than just changing a logo or updating a website, it’s redefining and refocusing on your goals. In this episode we talk about the weight of rebranding and how to count the cost of a rebrand to make absolutely sure that doing so would be in the best interest of your audience and customers.

Like counts. Followers. Page views. Impressions. Favorites. Retweets. It seems that you can't go to any website or app these days without seeing some form of voting system. Vote for your favorite image, double tap to leave a heart, favorite, and subscribe. The problem is that it's easy to attach personal value to these numbers. If your latest picture on Instagram got less likes than the last one did, you immediately start wondering what went wrong and why you messed up. But the numbers don't matter. What would you do if you had just one follower? What about 1,000? What about 100,000? What changes between 1 and 100,000? In this episode, we talk about how to avoid equating personal value with the numbers that are coming in, and ultimately why numbers don't matter.

Every time a new year rolls around, people immediately start making resolutions and new goals. Going to the gym, finally learning that new skill, finishing the project they started but never finished. Of course, as we all know, not all of those ever actually happen. Maybe a few months go by and we stick with it, but inevitably we've set ourselves up to fail. Why? Because we didn't approach our goals and plans with intentionality. Staying true to who you want to be in this next year requires specific direction, and it may even involve sacrificing some things you didn't know you needed to. This episode will help you break through some of the fog and finally get some clarity about how to make this next year the best one yet.

It seems that everyone has a million-dollar idea these days. You have an amazing concept for the next big company, product, or startup, and so you scribble your thoughts out excitedly on a piece of paper. Over the next few months you write up a business plan, get other people excited about your idea, and you can't wait to make it happen. Then something happens. The planning stage never seems to end. A few months go by but you're not quite ready to get into production because you want it to be absolutely perfect. You want the best end result possible, and so everything has to be just perfect. Except now it's been three years and you still haven't done anything about that idea, and five other companies have risen up in your place, leaving your million-dollar idea obsolete. Planning only works if we act upon the plans and actually do something about it. The greatest inventions of all time weren't birthed out of someone just looking at the blueprints: the inventor actually had to move forward and create it.

What you say and produce is incredibly important, but it’s important to take into consideration the environment that you find yourself in. It might be the kind of platform you use, the language you’re writing in, or the sort of market you’re selling your product to. Understanding what “surrounds” your brand and your message will make you more effective at reaching the right people. Content is about resonating with the right message, context is about resonating at the right moment. You could have the perfect content, but without the right context, it might mean absolutely nothing. In this episode, we examine the power of understanding the context surrounding your work and the methods you can use to become the expert in your context.

Storytelling is a tool to take people beyond than what they see, to open their minds and engage with them on a deeper level. It's more than stating the obvious, it's about inviting your audience on a journey that promises to make their lives better. It's not just about writing out some fiction. Crafting a narrative allows you to be intentional and imaginative and relevant, captivating the attention of your target audience and standing out from the competition that just states the facts. In this episode, we get more into the "how" of storytelling, exploring different methods of delivering a story and producing content that is interesting and relevant.