Symptoms of a bad brand (and how to fix them)

0:05Okay. Uh ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the factory floor. Uh we are happy to have you here. We're going to be talking about something very near and dear to at least one of our hearts. Uh so that'll be fun. Um but yeah, I am Nick. We have Zach here and Corey as well. And so we're just going to dive right in because what else is there to do? We're here to talk. So let's do it. Um, today we are talking about symptoms of bad branding. And uh, this may surprise you, but our own designer, Zach Stevens, has a lot of thoughts about branding. Um, so I'm actually going to let him kind of kick us off and give us a little bit of an intro and then we'll just kind of rattle through some of the symptoms and

0:50go through uh, some of the notes and cool things that we uh, are going to talk about. So, Zach, what's up, dude? What's going on? Well, this is one of the things that I don't think a lot of uh founders talk about or it gets put their way. I feel like most founders now um have some semblance that they need to enhance their marketing. They need to work on their positioning that u marketing seems to be at the forefront. However, they tend to overlook the counterpart of that which is building a brand. And the point of building a brand is to build trust. And it's trust that your user base can count on you not only to solve their problems, but they can count on you to act a certain way to show up and be a

1:33consistent personality in their life. Whether that's through the founder or through the way that the team delivers emails, through the look and feel of your product, they are counting on you to be consistent. And when you have that kind of consistency, it forges trust and an emotional connection that is really hard to deter. It's this kind of emotional connection that overpowers your preffrontal cortex, which is where you process all your logical information. And it's what leads to a command and price premiums. It leads to higher LTV uh lower customer acquisition cost. There's a lot of um trickle down benefits from nailing your brand, but it's a very hard thing to uh to actually define and create. But I think that and

2:20or even know if you need to work on it. So the reason that I wanted to talk about symptoms is because it's a lot easier to spot the symptoms than the the cause, which is what we're going to go through. I think a really good a good quote to kind of put the nail on this is that in creating that trust um you you build a good bridge and there's a quote from April Dunford which is trust is the bridge between your value proposition and actual sales. So without it, even if you position your product perfectly, it's going to fall flat. Yep. I I It's funny you brought up something that I was going to like kind of ask, which was like for your average person who doesn't think about branding or uh positioning even that often. Um I

3:05feel like when something has bad branding, it might you might notice. It's going to stick out and you're kind of going to like maybe catch those things. But when it's really good and that's not really on the forefront of your mind, it's like everything like you don't even notice that it's good. It just is good. If that makes sense. Like branding kind of feels like one of those things. Is that the case? Oh, totally. There's a I think it's Deer Rams um who wrote uh I think it's the design of everything everyday things. Um either way, he he has this quote that is good design is invisible where you don't notice it because it just works and it feels good. And I think that you could say the same thing about not not only from a

3:47technical perspective that it works, everything feels like it's in place, but when you have the brand nailed, it just feels genuine. Like there's not a an aura of um like pandering to the latest tech trend or, you know, trying to be something that it's not, trying to bolster an image that isn't true to the founding team and what the product stands for, but that it's actually cohesive all the way through. that there's a a through line that is noticeable or not noticeable because it just is, you know, it it doesn't veer off in any awkward direction. Right. Cool. Yeah. I was like, I think that's true, but I didn't like know it until you we started talking. But um well, let's talk about some of the

4:31symptoms. Uh we kind of have some different buckets that these symptoms fall into. We have like aesthetic or like visual symptoms. Uh we have some like customer acquisition or like salesreated symptoms and how they impact that and then some that are a little bit more like core founder story type symptoms. Uh so we'll just start at the top which is like the aesthetic ones and we'll kind of go through uh and just talk about some of those. Uh the first one here in the notes is uh starting to redesign your product without a matching marketing site which you know we've had a client or two uh in this position or say like oh yeah we've like started a whole like product rebrand and we're like okay all right so we got to like

5:10figure out how to make sure we mold in what's going on with the marketing site. So um is like I guess my question is like why why do people do this if that makes sense? like why is that uh something that people even do from the start? Um you kind of got a little choppy there, Nick. So I'm hoping that I I heard what you said. But I think the way you I think what you said was why do they even start there and why is why is this a Yeah. Uh why is this a symptom? So, um I feel like the product is a lot easier to spot when things don't look as nice or it's the one that people care about more because it's what people are like the product is what people are buying, you know, and that's what they want to use

5:54and they're looking at it. Especially if you've gotten somebody to buy into your product, more often times they just completely bypass your marketing site and they're going straight into your app rather than having to look at your storytelling. So they might they might have been customers for years uh and they're now seeing a new suite of other tools that look a lot nicer that you know bring them more delight than frustration. And so naturally a founder is going to react and say oh I got to revamp my product. Um, but dang, like I have a lot to do. Like, you know, this this probably was just like a bootstrap template that I uh I bought many years ago that um doesn't have a whole lot of styling to it. And so, they begin going

6:36down the stylistic route, but they don't have any idea of where to begin. And then you run into this problem where your product looks really nice, but then your marketing efforts are completely disjointed. And because you've spent so much time on your product to launch it, now you feel beholdened to the product uh to set the tone for everything else. But that's not a good place to start because products are far more stripped down as far as their expression and storytelling. They're a lot more utilitarian. So it's actually way better to go in reverse. you think of all your marketing efforts which can be applied across multiple mediums and you get a way better feel of okay if we're if we're operating um on this kind of

7:17platform within this form factor we can we need to strip away these things but it's still going to maintain the core essence of the brand. So it's just a bad place to start because you end up having to then retrofit everything else to something that wasn't as fully fleshed out as it could be from a design standpoint. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I yeah, I was thinking like about how sometimes we just get into like a a web project and it's like the explanation for why things look the way they do is like, oh yeah, it's just basically like band-aid after band-aid after band-aid after band-aid for visuals. Like, oh, we kind of like patched this on the product and then we kind of patched this up over on the

7:56marketing site and it's just like we basically did a bunch of mini refreshes over and over and over and now everything's a mess. So, we need to like go back to square one. Uh, it's always hard to jump into those those kind of projects. Um, but they didn't even do it using the same color band-aid. It was like here's my Lord of the Explorer one, my X-Men band-aid, and my tape on it like Yeah. Whoa. This is so different. It's not even like a cast. That's one color. Yeah. Yeah, it could be tough. Um, cool. I Yeah, that that totally makes sense. Um I actually this the next one is the one I was most interested when I was reading through the notes. Uh and it's constantly chasing design trends rather

8:39than developing a unique identity. Um, well, can I ask like what are the ones that you're like you now as the designer roll your eyes at or like oh everybody tries to do this and it's just like h again we got another brand doing the same thing or you don't have to answer that question because I'm putting you on the spot but I I dispose of all of them. No, there is no such all of them. The particularly when it comes to visuals, there is no such thing as a designed trend to set the tone for your aesthetic. It doesn't exist. They're all fads. Every single one of them. The only things that become trends are macro evolutions, things like mobile responsive design, um accessibility or um progressive web apps, you know, and

9:29having to account for these larger trends that don't really even apply to the aesthetic. It's more about functionality. Um cuz every single like a true trend will stand the test of time. Everything else is just a fad. So when you see things like brutalist or you know hyperminimalism or um like all the gradients and or like these superhumanist like chunky weird type faces that have the ink wells inside of them. Those are all fats and the reason I try and stay away from them and just ignore them completely is because they aren't helpful in helping somebody figure out what they want to say and how they want to sound and how they can be different within the market. So, I completely dispense all trends. But if

10:15you find yourself um you know, constantly scouring Dribble or awards or Behance and you're like, "Wow, this all looks really nice and I want to look like that." It's probably time that it doesn't mean that you have a bad or that you're not stoked on your branding. Um that's just a bad place to start looking for it. Yeah, I totally get that. I'm always like, "What is this a trend?" Yeah, cuz I I when I look I'm thinking like oh this looks cool. I'm not even thinking like is this a trend? Is this not a trend? Like that's not like the first thing in my mind. I'm just thinking like does this look good or no? Um but that's interesting. I my guess is that when I usually think to myself, oh this looks

10:55really good or this feels like right or good. It's probably not a trend. It's probably or it's probably not a fad. It's probably like, you know, something that can withstand a little bit more uh solidly. It might also just be the first iteration of it, which is quite genuine. So like three that I think of and I routinely go back to um maybe I should say four. Uh Gumroad, Gumroads redesign felt very true to them, but then you had a bunch of other looks that said, "Oh, we want to look just like Gumroad." And you know, couldn't think of it on their own. Gumroad probably took it from something else that is completely outside of software and tech in general and then infuse that with their product.

11:38Um, so that's why it feels good to them because it's actually something they like and that feels the way they want other people to feel. You could probably say the same thing with Mailchimp too. Stripe when they came out with their new website is like everybody wanted to be Stripe and it's like well that only works for Stripe because they found something that inspired them to do that. It's probably like a lava lamp or, you know, I don't know where they got that inspiration from. Apple is another big one where everybody wanted to design like Apple, but the only reason it works is because it's for Apple and they have a genuine authentic connection to that aesthetic where other people don't. So,

12:14I think that the first movers tend to um strike a chord with it because it's genuine to them. But if you find yourself like chasing after trends or trying to say like this, I can't get this to feel right or I'm still not happy with it, it's probably because you're not and you're never going to be because it's not made for you. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, cool. Very good. Thank you. Uh, let's dude, I really want to talk about this one, too. All these are so good. You guys are awesome. Um, okay. Okay. Poor quality, inconsistent design assets created by non-professionals, damaging brand perceptions that embarrass you. So, this is like I'm interpreting this as there's no foundation. And because there's no

12:57foundation, we're having other people uh come in to try to like work on something to like give us an outcome that we want without a foundation. It's, you know, it's the build your house on the sand versus build your house on the rock. That's how I interpret it. Is that what this means? some of it. I think this is more of a symptom where if you're just consistently embarrassed by the the output of the visuals for your company, it means that you need to address the foundational issue, which is you don't have a succinct clarified brand guide to to make this type so other somebody else can come in and take a look at it and say, I'm going to use these type faces, these colors, and even if I flex them a

13:41little bit, it's still going to feel like it's part of the family rather than something completely off base or just low caliber in general. Gotcha. Cool. That makes sense. Um I can remember uh Yeah, go ahead. Just really quick on that one. I can remember as a marketer having working with designers in the past and not knowing what I know now obviously, but uh they would be like, "Oh, how do you want it to look and why don't you just send over some of your brand guidelines?" and I'd be like, "Okay, well, our brand guidelines are pretty much just like here's our primary color and like look at the type face, the font that we use on our website." And then they would return something and I'd be like, "Oh, that's atrocious." And like,

14:24"That doesn't look at all how I envisioned it would look." And I realized like well I think that was my fault because obviously like the direction wasn't very clear but also it kind of isn't my fault because that just means that we don't have a very defined brand. I remember in particular when I was working at a company and it was sort of like this V2 of the brand that was a little bit of like a hodgepodge hack job kind of quickly put together and didn't really get like rolled out and um approved by everyone in the company or where this is like now this is how we use this brand. So we didn't have a lot of like assets even to give us examples. So when I gave this designer that direction, um they didn't really know

15:13what to do. And I think that's maybe another, you know, another symptom of that symptom, which is like if people are making a bunch of things that don't feel on brand according to your brand guidelines, maybe it's because you don't have good brand guidelines or a brand definition. It's the It's the if everybody's an you're probably an Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. type of scenario. If everyone's a terrible designer, it probably means you're a terrible designer. Yeah. Um Okay. So, I have a question then. Um in a vacuum, like two identical products, but one looks better than the other, will people almost always pick the one that looks better?

16:02I can't give definitive proof on this, but I will say this. Babies naturally look at people who are more attractive than people who are not as attractive where their faces are. Yes, it's 100% true. They will pay more attention to people whose faces are symmetrical, evenly proportioned and into the golden ratio that we we look for. So if we are doing that at a young age with no prompting with no nurturing to guide that whatsoever I think it's very safe to say that people will pick the the more aesthetically pleasing version over the ugly one. You can also look at other parts of industry and business like Europe has flourishing tourism because it's beautiful and they have these ornate buildings that you can go

16:47in and people go there just to look or art, you know, like people buy art just because they want things to look nice, especially if you're um if it's the same price and someone has just put a little bit more thought into the presentation. It's like a a wellresented plate of food versus slob. You know, like if you get a plate of spaghetti that is perfectly like, you know, coiled and there's a garnish on it and there's just the right amount of Parmesan cheese versus like, you know, cafeteria food smack like, you know, bustle over your plate or whatever. Which one are you going to pick? You know, like there's no there's no economic incentive at all or rationale to being stupidly ugly. I just cut out for a second. Sorry. Yeah.

17:34Yeah. I have an interesting story about this because when I was at Barametrics, u I ran a survey one time that had an open-ended question at the end that asked our customers, why did you choose Barametrics over our competitors? And I was expecting, you know, to get answers like, "Oh, well, you know, I can get this type of analysis or graph and bare metrics that I can't get anywhere else or your guys's pricing is much better or yada yada yada." But actually, the most consistent number one answer that we got was it's better designed and I like the design and I like to look at it because it was kind of a dashboard, you know, analytics tool. is something that people look at all the time and they put a lot

18:16of value in how it's presented and the way that it's displayed and the aesthetics and design of that thing. And we even had competitors who were completely free. Um, and Bramics was paid and they were willing to pay that money pretty much strictly for the design and and the aesthetic value of that. So, we've had this discussion in the past of like, you know, all else equal, will software go the route of like fashion, for example, where maybe name brand becomes something that you can put a really, really big premium price tag on and charge 10 times more than your competitors for the exact same thing. I don't know if that's necessarily true or as true to the same extent as something like fashion, but there's definitely a

19:03competitive edge to things that are welldesigned and have a very unique brand that people um find affinity for. Mhm. Yeah. So, I think I mean that pretty much puts a pin in the aesthetic category. General point being that everyone likes to say that we won't judge a book by its cover, but yes, we do. We love judging things. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Um, cool. Yeah, let's put a pin in the uh the aesthetic stuff. Let's move on to the next kind of category, which is sales/c customer acquisition, branding, bad branding symptoms. Um the first one is lack of trust signals and proof social proof in brand communications. Um so maybe like because that was a little confused reading this one. So can you

19:56just like color it for me? Uh and maybe just clarified it a little bit. Yeah. Well, um I think a big a big trust signal and this could kind of go in between aesthetic and customer acquisition because that's why I put it at the top on this because if you don't look trustworthy, if you look scammy like like there isn't a whole lot of thought behind your design or it just doesn't give the impression of a stable, cohesive, well-intentioned company, then people are going to like the hairs on their neck are going to stand up immediately when they see But there's a there's a deeper thing in here which is um social proof and trust signals and my my favorite quote or one of the best quotes about branding is

20:42your brand is not what you say it is. It's what they say it is. So the brand that you like you have no control over really what the brand is. You just have control over direction and the perception that you're able to make people have. So if you have enough people saying the same things about you and those things are good then that's your brand and that's what people are going to say about you like you know Zappos being the kindest company or Chick-fil-A you know taking actions like saying my pleasure at the end of every um customer engagement um even the names they give their products you know like this is not an Arnold Palmer this is a SunJoy you know all of those things contribute to them living up to their

21:23mission of being the most caring company in the world that just happens to to sell chicken sandwiches. U so but you get a lot of social proof with that because again it's not what you say it is, it's what they say it is. So if you get things like you know your customer testimonials that talk about um how you make people how you make them feel, that's going to improve your uh customer acquisition efforts. Gotcha. Yeah, that totally makes sense. But if you can So, well, I guess so if you can define how you want people to feel, that's going to make it way easier for you to help hit that target with the actions that you take. I see. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. I I I'm trying to like

22:08I'm passing all the things that you say through when we did the our like brand blueprint for uh conversion factory. So, that's awesome. Um, right. The next one is add one more thing to that. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say that that makes me think of like I feel like the brand and the aesthetic on the customer acquisition side of things if it's if you literally thought of a in-person sales interaction of like you have to go to someone's house or into someone's office and make a pitch for example. Um, and and even I'm thinking back like I've even seen I saw the founders of the first startup that I work for pitch VCs before and you walk into a room and you go up to the 10th floor of their office and you know they

22:50they walk in they have all these things, right? And like you wouldn't just walk up in there with flip-flops and a graphic tea, right? You want to put on your Sunday best. You want to look professional. You want to look on brand to whoever you are and your company and sort of the thing you're trying to represent. And I think that one way to think about this is like you don't want to, you know, show up to the sales meeting in flip- flops but not know that you're in flip- flops and everyone is looking at your flip flops and judging them. Sort of like the equivalent of having bad branding is people are like, "Wait, what's going on here?" And like, can I trust you? And like, are you who you say that you are because you don't look like

23:32you're trying to present yourself that way. Yeah. It's like bad breath like or okay I've had a stain on my shirt all day and just like no one has said anything. No one said pointed out like hey this just like doesn't I love your product but it just doesn't fit like no one's wearing wearing flip- flops without the intention of wearing flip-flops. It's just it's out of place you know like and again the through line that's the hard part. It's like you can definitely do like you can make billion-dollar brands that are flip-flopesque, you know, like that make you feel like you're at a beach and should be s my tai. It's conditional. So, it's a but I guess that's what becomes so subjective about this and why it's tough to do.

24:12Yeah. Speaking of the subjective nature, uh it kind of ties into what the next one is, which is like a lack of emotional connection with the user. Uh like focusing solely on features rather than the benefits and the story. So that's like, hey, I want to focus in on like what does this do and who do you become through this product essentially versus like all the bells and whistles that people like to pretend are the most important thing. Um, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Well, I think the features um the features are good like and again this is why branding is the perfect counterpart to positioning and other salesoriented copy and salesoriented efforts. Uh because what the benefits do or speaking to them is it it it transforms the

25:03person which is what you are going for. You you want your brand to be something that helps transform people and helps them get from one part of their story to another. And that's it ties into that feeling of well, I want people to feel more calm. I want people to feel more energized. I want people to feel more organized. I want people to have some spontaneity. There's always going to be this dichotomy of taking somebody from something like a current predicament and then totally turning it up on its head. And that feeling helps you uh develop the visuals that you want to evoke that feeling in a way that's pertinent to you. So, and when you can do that, when you have that emotional connection, again, you stop fighting on

25:47the the prefrontal cortex with like other features and prices and start winning hearts, which is a lot harder to deviate from. Cuz if you can if you can win if you can win the amydala and win the reptile brain, the logic brain's going to uh get or follow suit. That's just it's so like it's just crazy that um there's like it's like a language like you have, you know, like this whole thing that you have to like tediously put together and all these like perfect little strings to pull and it trickles all the way down to like this tiny little icon right before the footer in like a benefits section or whatever. But it's like it that thing you did way over here goes all the way down to that and that little one icon and that one little

26:38blurb is supposed to like make the visitor or the the customer feel a certain way. And it is like a true like amazing art slashcience which is such a like those are opposites but to see them come together is like so interesting. Um sorry just a tangent I had while you were thinking. I think that we found the name for your book, your upcoming book. When the amygdala, I can't even say it. When the amydala win the amydala, victory. Victory at the amydala. 90% joke. That's a great idea. I know the branding's going to be beautiful. Yeah, I think the brand I think the brand heist still comes. But when victory at Amydala also sounds really cool. Yeah. Um okay that I want to go through the next one which is um

27:31undifferiated between competitors and customers will find you replaceable uh through that. Um I guess like yeah how important is brand to obviously brand is like what the visual differentiation but like it kind of goes back to what we said about bare metrics like the you could look be the exact same product even and then just the brand makes the difference. Um is that kind of the same tiein with with this this one? I think the visuals are important um it's a key aspect of it. This, I would say, actually falls more on what you do and cool actions that you take and the way that you talk. Um, I think that those the visuals are important and they should all cohhere. A good example that I think of is REI, you know, um, a

28:23couple years ago. I don't remember when the first one was, but everybody was so sick of Black Friday sales and they're just like, dude, like we're getting like everybody and their mother was getting hammered over the head with Black Friday ads and all this stuff and then REI comes out and it's like we're closed on Black Friday. Go outside. Awesome. So, turning down the number one sales day um in the year to stand true to their values is Whoa. I can't believe that they just did that. So, I it's hard for me to think of software examples for this. Um, but you can do things like the way that you sign off on your email, the way that you talk about your product, the kind of events that you put on that really make things

29:12memorable. Um, it's the those are the kind of uh differentiations that I would push for. Um, and sticking to your values. You know, we have a client less annoying CRM that only has one pricing tier, just one. And they will never ever ever deviate from that. And I have a lot of respect for it because I think that it's a a huge um contributor to the brand that they that they present. Super interesting. I like this one a lot because um from a marketer's perspective, I'm always trying to evaluate a website and and a product from the perspective of the positioning and if the brand seems to match the positioning. And so you take a bunch of products for example, let's just take that CRM example. There

30:02are tons and tons and tons of CRM out there. There are some CRM that have a sort of uh very specific use case like we're the best CRM for um for follow-ups for example. Would I be able to tell sort of without just looking at the words, but also looking at the look and the feel and the vibe of the website and the product that this is based off of like one specific use case, for example, or we're the CRM for coffee shops or we're the CRM for churches or we're the CRM for fill-in-theblank kind of persona. Does the brand seem to match that persona or the way you want to connect with that, you know, buyer type? Or maybe you have um, you know, we're the CRM for everyone or we're the most complicated CRM. You can do anything

30:54with our CRM and it's just the most powerful, awesome, featureful one. Does the brand match that type of value proposition? And I feel like a lot of times I'll come across a website and what I'm seeing and what I'm reading just aren't matching. And it feels confusing as a buyer because I can't tell if this product is supposed to be easy to use and friendly and approachable or if it's supposed to be like sophisticated and powerful and um you know like there's a a world of opportunity and endless possibilities with what I can do with it. And I think that those are pretty um important to match up, especially as people are shopping around comparing you to your competitors.

31:41Can they tell that there's something different about you? And especially to the story that your competitors are telling, does it look like you're telling a different type of story? Sort of the idea of like you pick up a couple different books. You know, a fantasy book is going to look a lot different than a sci-fi book is going to look a lot different than a self-help book. If you read a self-help book with the cover that looks like a sci-fi book, it's going to it's going to look a little bit confusing like what you're getting yourself into. And I feel like that's a lot of times what I see with a brand or a website of a SAS product. Yeah, it's really tough because you you want to create something that's that is

32:20truly different, but you run the risk of it being um in congruent with how you want people to feel. You know, that's why it's it's I feel like chasing the trends is really a bad way to go about this because if you just pick something that's on trend, it's like but it doesn't match up with the emotional response you're trying to get. So, that's where you run into those kinds of issues. It's super hard. Like, um it's especially difficult because there is almost never a single right answer to how you differentiate yourself, especially visually. The hard part is that you have thousands of different ways that you can differentiate yourself visually and in the way you act too. Um, but as long as you have that north star

33:06of I know I want people to feel this way in every interaction, that's a pretty good filter for u, you know, how like even the pricing of your product cuz this is this is what's fascinating is that between branding and positioning, like they play off of each other so much and it's a yin-yang um event where the positioning changes and then the branding has to change alongside it or maybe the branding shifts um, and leads and guides some of the initiatives that um go alongside with the positioning efforts. So it's a it's more philosophical than it is like datadriven decision which is what makes it a lot harder. Agreed. Much harder. Um, I was gonna ask because the the next one is like I think something that we have

33:59maybe run into a time or two or been on calls uh with people and kind of felt like maybe this was the case. Um, but it is unable to command premium price despite having a higher quality product. So, this is someone who's like clearly awesome product. It does an amazing thing. It's superpower. But like you go to their site and you're like, "I'm sorry, but this like doesn't communicate that at all." Or it's like not up to snuff with the quality. Maybe it has some of the brand like visuals that you need, but it's just not like pushed to the extreme. Um, or it's just like, "Oh, these are just communicating completely different things on your market website. you look like, you know, the affordable

34:40option, the the Toyota Camry, but the actual power and what you want is to communicate that you're a Ferrari and uh it's not working. Um so how I guess like do people go to like do you go back to scratch like what do you do? Uh well to fix it I don't know. It it would depend on it. Branding is always going to be like a case by case scenario as far as like the the solution to your current problem at the moment. Um I think that that is the inability to command uh price premium. Uh I think that you could put that more on the aesthetic area. I think that but it does come into customer acquisition because it's like your product is like the engine that's inside it is out of this world. The shell of the car is a rusty piece of

35:35crap and you have a more powerful engine, but your packaging around it is not up to snuff. And that's why people aren't going to trust you. It's like Bumblebee, you know, in the first Transformers movie where he's the the old Camaro and then, you know, driving along. Yeah. Yeah. And he be he transforms himself into the the new like 2007 Camaro, which is like, you know, really sweet. And it's like that, you know, you under the hood, you've got a lot of horsepower, you just don't look it. And that's a customer it it it leads to problems with customer acquisition. Yeah, totally. Um, okay. So, Corey, you put this one because I and I I'm going to put you on the spot to talk about it. Uh, but you put based on your name, user

36:22expects you to do one thing, but you actually do another. Um, I often forget that like how important naming is with branding because a lot of times we're when we're working with someone, we're working with someone who isn't looking to change their name. They're like, I love the name. This is my name. This is what's happening. I just need a different like visual aesthetic uh or whatever they're looking for. Um, but and the name can often be a problem. Do you did you have like an example in your head when you thought of this or just like a general like Yeah, sometimes the name just like doesn't make sense, man. It's going to come to me right after we finish recording this, but I can't think of a specific example in my

37:01mind, but I know that there's at least two that I've thought of in the past and why I wrote this down, but um I I've definitely seen people uh either one, their name sort of like is something that kind of exists already and so they end up ranking for something that is software related, but that isn't the thing that they do or people are looking essentially people are typing into Google for something. They find their website which is like kind of the exact name of what they're looking for. But what they do is something completely different. So they have people sign up and then they're confused and then they, you know, maybe accidentally convert from their trial or they, you know, type in angry support

37:44messages cuz they're like, "Your product's a piece of crap. Doesn't do at all what I want it to." And you're like, "What do you that's not at all what who told you it was going to do this?" Um, I wish I could think of specific examples, but I think that actually happens quite often where people choose a name that's, you know, relatively close or it's kind of descriptive. Uh, or it's something they think is ambiguous and just kind of like a brandable word or name, but actually means something else to someone. Uh, means something completely different to someone else. Yeah, there I've I've experienced this personally. Like I I don't actually have I don't want to say one of them, but there's a couple where it's like I

38:31forget if it's an IO or a dot or a dot, you know, whatever. And so I just end up like searching the business name and being like this is just a regular word. Like this is also a regular word. And now I have to like s search that word and business or that word and what I think the product does too. and it kind of just like butts up. But also like there's these great words that mean something else that in the context of your product really seem cool and they fit really well. So I could see how it's not uh super cut and dry. Uh were you going to say something, Zach? This one's interesting because the I mean my my take on names is that it is supposed to be the title to a story. It's not supposed to detail the story

39:14itself. Or you could think about them as far as names of people. Like if we were to instead of referring to Corey as Corey, if we referred to him as 6'4 white man. I do that sometimes. Sorry. Sorry. 6 foot three. No, he's not 63. I like 6'2. Come on in though. I can't believe he said four. Yeah, that's freaky. Sorry. Maybe maybe I wasn't talking about his height. Oh yeah. Okay, go on. Yeah, before I say something more cancelable. Uh, but if like that doesn't mean anything, you know, like 6'4 white guy is a very descriptive term of who you are, but it's not who you are. It isn't like but your name um has more meaning attached to it. And this is why I think people are scared of more unique names because they are different. But

40:08like if Nick's name was Wolf or like the number seven that stands out, you know? It's like it it's there's there's more of a story that you could tell with something like that. Uh so I think the the thing with names is to I feel like you want your name to be associated with what you do, not to tell what you do because you end up just digging yourself a hole that you eventually can't get out of. Like you you get pigeonholed into being this one thing and it completely limits you from um expanding. I mean, we see this all the time now with like AI brands where they're like the name like AI is woven into their product. It's like that's not the point. Like you're you're basing your name off of a feature and that's

40:54not good. Mhm. Oh, you don't get me started on AI. Yeah, we we we won't. Okay, let's move on. Um Okay, so we went through aesthetic uh symptoms, some sales and customer acquisition ones. Let's go into founder story. Can you like intro me to what a founder story uh symptom is? Like can you maybe clarify that for me? Yeah. Well, the it's it's not just about the like the success of your product and how it does monetarily. I think that that's nice. More importantly, I think that you should be able to enjoy working on your product and love your product as a separate entity apart from yourself and get joy out of creating it and have it be a part of you, but not so contingent upon like the monetary

41:52aspects of it. I mean, that's important, but I feel like you should feel confident and love your brand like and you should be cool. like you should want to show up and work on it and improve on it every day. So that's what these are for. Um is having I feel like having a brand helps you keep your story true to yourself and make you not hate the product that you've created. Yeah. Yeah. This is like the deep connection that you have. Like I I want if I could I would just wear a conversion factory shirt every day or like the stickers that came in the mail like we ordered stickers and I was like Britney can I put this on your car? She was like, "Don't put a sticker on my car. Like, no stickers." And I was like,

42:32"This is my my company. Like, I love this. Like, this looks so good." Um, so I definitely understand. I get kind of where you're going. Uh, the first symptom that is here is there's no clear brand story or creation narrative that connects to the users. Um I kind of had like a larger question to tie into this uh which is if a brand uh is truly like the vision and has what you're explaining about the founder story like it if it has that will it all like do you think it always has a better chance of connecting with users like if the if the founder loves to work on it all this you yes I think that if you have like We authenticity just comes through always.

43:20This is why like pop music is so boring and lame because it was it was written by somebody sung by somebody else. But then when you hear a song like Bohemian Rap City or Stairway to Heaven or or I'm sure I mean I bet Scissor writes I bet the ones that the ones that are are all hers you know it's like you have you have a feeling of this doesn't feel right or like bad movies. It's like I I don't have any soul attached to this. There's this quote from Robert um Robert Sther um and it's it's this. It's no tears in the author, no tears in the reader.

44:11So, and I think that you could say the same thing about people who are building products. Like if you if your heart's not in this, if you don't have this driving force that you're putting into your product that you show up every day and you're like, "This is what I'm going for." That's when you're not playing at your best. And that's when you are not creating what you could. And when you have that brand story and the driving force, like you can see the vision, you can see how things are going to change, you can see how the world's going to be better. If you have that in your back pocket, you're gonna be able to show up a lot better every day. Not only for yourself, but for your team and especially for your users.

44:47Dang, dude. Put that on a poster. That whole thing. Flip that, Michael. Come on. Um, no, I'm just kidding. Um, the next one is doing everything your user asks you to, even if it goes against your vision uh for the product and how it'll impact the world. Um, this seems like an obvious like dude, you can't just like you can't make everybody happy. Like you have a vision, you have a mission, you have a brand, like you have to do the things that fit within the mission and the vision. Yeah. I think that having the having that defined why allows you to filter out the garbage es and es especially when it feels tough to say no. Like what if somebody wants to buy your company and they're a horrible company? Like

45:36they're a horri they're a terrible holding company that you believe is leaving a net negative impact on the world and you're going to sell to them. You sure? Like that having this story allows you to do things maintain your convictions. Um, the main reason that I wrote this was because of something like audience capture where you feel like the user base is dictating your every move. Um, but if it runs counter to what you want this product to do and the changes you want to see and you still believe it's viable, obviously I'm not saying you should not listen to your users, I'm saying that you should work a happy medium and be a true leader and establish what you will and will not compromise on. And your brand helps you

46:19do that. Or defining your brand helps you do that. Yeah. So good. It ties into the next one like pretty darn tightly. So I'll just fly right through it, which is scattered focus essentially. So trying to be everything for everyone except instead of excelling in one area. This is kind of like an adjacent one I think to the last one which is like you know everything the user asks you to do you're trying to do. And this one is basically saying like, hey, you're trying to do all of the things instead of like focusing in on the one thing that is tied to your mission, tied to your vision, tied to your branding. Um, I I feel like the first one I I don't know. I think this one actually I think I see more than the one before it.

47:02I guess the one of the things that I hear all the time is, well, we want to be professional but also playful. And you know it's like the I'm like why don't why don't you I mean pick one you know and more often than not it's like I think particularly the word professional people just don't have a good grasp on what it means. Um when they think professional they think very you know stodgy and you know in assume corporate corporate um but what they what they really mean is like trustworthy and trustworthiness comes in a multitude of forms. Um but when you're trying to be all these different things as far as your brand is concerned like I want to be luxurious and I want to be affordable and I want

47:49to be um you know really high-end but I also don't want to intimidate people. It's like you have you you have to just freaking pick a thing and be au present the most authentic version of yourself all the time. Otherwise, you just like you end up trying to live lies and you can't do that. Eventually, the lies fold in on themselves. But if you have focus and you understand this is how we're supposed to make people feel it's um it's like blinders where you know everything else u stays out of your purview and you're not going to be annoyed and you're going to be the best at making people feel that way as opposed to trying to incorporate all these different feelings. Yeah. It feels like it kind of goes back

48:34to something that Corey said a while back like about like the visuals and the positioning not matching up. It's kind of like the same idea like oh we have this very like kind of serious and trustworthy and clean uh visual, you know, aesthetic, but then we have like we asked the copyriter to like throw a bunch of exclamation points and other like weird jargony things in the copyright. It's like these things are not connecting and you can't be everything for everyone. and this doesn't make sense. So, just like pick a side. It's totally fine. It's totally fine to pick one of those and go with it. Um, but yeah, I don't know. It's kind of funny. I like what you said. People like Go ahead. I'm lagging.

49:17No, please. I was going to say I like that you said like just pick one because I think a lot of people want to do both because they're scared of excluding someone or um the consequences of if they pick one then maybe you know they lose something. But um then you end up that's when you really end up looking and sounding like everyone else is when you try to too appealing and because you're playing it too safe. It takes guts. It takes cojones to be like, "Nope, this is what we're doing. This is going to be a lot different. This is going to be very focused, very exclusionary in some senses. It's not going to appeal to everybody. It's not going to represent everything we want it to, but it's going to represent the most

50:04important things we want, and that's what really stands out." Yeah. I mean, and there's always spillover effect, too. You know, everybody worries about the exclusionary aspects of it. My favorite example is Harley-Davidson, which is, you know, Harley-Davidson. Does any part of that scream 40-year-old IT consultant? Any part of Harley, like the way they talk about themselves, even their product? No. None of it. So, why are there so many 40-year-old IT consultants that buy Harley's? Cuz Harley's are sick, dude. Cuz Harley's are freaking sick. It's like you, it's almost like you you see the brand as it's like that person believes that and I can get behind that. That's genuine. I don't have to like it,

50:53but I even if I don't buy it, I damn sure respect it and I know that I can't get them to change and that's something that I admire. This is the same things that gravitate us towards human beings, which is like you sometimes meet that guy and you're like, dude, he's just anybody, you know, he's everyone to anybody. That guy door open for you. He gets you the right bottle of wine. He open, you know, he holds your hand. You talk, okay, shut up. No, like you know, like what he's saying to you and he's like, dude, totally like he totally agrees with you. He might say the same thing to someone else who has a totally different view, but like there's some people that it's like I'm just getting like you're just you. You're you right

51:33now and then when I leave you're still going to be you. You're not going to change. Like that is the brand like that you want to be on that line that's like I this is exactly what it is. Um what's the there's a there's a line from the office when they're at Chili's. It's like one of my my favorite things. I forget the actor's name, but he was on SNL. He's the guy from the the school board and they're talking about Jim Jim Leven's. Yeah. Tim Meadows. Thank you. And he's like, "Man, you you showed you showed your skin. You showed your true colors. You said, "World, here's my blood. It's red. What else do you want?" I think I think about that line all the time. So good. Yeah. Uh, I'd also like to make sure

52:17it's recorded that uh Corey Haynes's advice on branding is have kahones. Okay. I don't want to miss that. He did say that. Um, so I want to make uh reiterated. Yeah. Yeah. Um I think there's something to go ahead. There's also something to um like an aspiration when you said like, "Oh, how many 40-year-old IT consultants do you know who are uh you know do remind you of Harley-Davidson?" It's like none. But there are probably a lot of 40-year-old IT consultants who like Harley-Davidson and maybe even buy one because it makes them feel aspirationally how they want to. Maybe they don't like their brand of being like, "I'm a 40-year-old IT consultant."

53:04They want to feel badass and young and rebellious again, and so they buy a Harley-Davidson and kind of buy into that brand as a way to kind of uh, you know, fashion on themselves kind of their old self. Yeah. They're like trading the Prius. I'm done with the Prius life, right? They're rebranding themselves in a way. I think the same thing happens though even with software happens with clothes. It happens with a lot of other purchases if you're Mac or PC so on and so forth where it's like are you trying to become more of a power user? Cool. Like this is the tool for you now. You're going to feel like wow there's so many tools at my disposal. Maybe not everyone wants to feel that way. Um, you can take that analogy to a bunch of

53:49other, you know, areas, but I think there's something cool about the aspirational like I'm gonna buy this because this is the direction that I want to go. Kit did something like that quite recently. Their current headline is for creators who mean business. And that's a fantastic headline because it speaks volumes. It's like we are a creative person who wants to use their creativity to make money. And that's way different than what everybody else is positioning themselves as. Um, so I think that that's that's a good example of of that narrowed focus that it's like you're a creator, you're a creative person, you also want to make money. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay, we have one more. So, let's close out with one more. Uh, this is a

54:36one-word symptom. The symptom is confidence. Uh, this is like kind of like just thrown out. Um, so I want to just like let you explain. What do you mean when you just put confidence in here? Maybe I should have put lack thereof. Yeah. I was like, this is a this is an opposite. No confidence. Yeah. I think hearkening a little bit back to the um embarrassment that we talked about with aesthetics. I think that you're going to work on this brand and this product for years. Shouldn't you feel good about it? like in all aspects, especially the way that you look. When I talk about this and I have presentations, I give this uh sideby-side photo. It's my favorite photos of all time. And it's uh this charity group that did uh makeovers for

55:27homeless people who were seeking jobs. And what they would do is they'd take them, they'd go give them a shower, they would give them a haircut, they would put them in a really nice suit. And so there's this picture of this uh really, you know, frazzled, looks kind of strung out guy with, um, you know, unckempt hair. Um, he's got dirt on him and a a jacket that doesn't fit like like a a weatherproof jacket. And on the picture right next to him, he's in a perfectly tailored suit with a color that matches his skin tone wonderfully. His beard's trimmed and his hair is combed and cut. And the best part is is that he's smiling. And in the the previous picture, he's not he's not happy with who he is. But simply by

56:18getting a shower and getting a new set of clothes, it boosts your confidence. And if I can give founders that little bit of extra help, like, look, man, you got this. Look at you. You look sharp. You know, let's go. That's I think the you look sharp. You sound sharp. Everything's going to be okay. I think that that's the the most important piece of nailing your brand is that you have confidence in yourself. Yeah, preach it, dude. I think for uh for startups dude, I mean one of the biggest things you can do to boost team morale and performance is having a good brand because the opposite having a brand that no one really cares about or is even frankly a little bit embarrassed of. No one wants to show up in the

57:10company t-shirts. No one wants to hand out the swag. No one wants to go point and say, "Oh, that's our booth over there. You should go talk to us." No one says um you know, no one shows up confident and sort of like with swagger, right? Uh but when the whole team is on board and is like we look freaking dope and like where the sh is, you know what I mean? it comes a lot awful lot differently and um totally changes the dynamic of a sales call, showing up at a conference, um having team off sites and retreats, uh hosting dinners, everything, you know, in person with your potential customers. Yeah. Yeah. Like even family, like telling family, friends what you do. Like, yeah, I work at XYZ and it's amazing. They're

58:01freaking sick. Well, it's like the the little business card leave behinds that we had. Um I feel like that's one of the most conversion factory things I've ever produced the cuz it I mean it had humor. It was minimal in its design. What it is and Oh, sure. Sorry. Should have done that. Um I think I might have one. Actually, my wall my box is up there. I can get it. I know reach if you want. Yeah, do it. Grab it because I mean part of this will be on video so we can actually show people. So for those who are just listening um what it is is it's a our tried and trueue uh conversion factory blue. It's just our No, it's actually facing uh normal for us.

58:50Okay. It's just um with our logo in the bottom right corner and our red accent that we always do. And on the back it says I think it's 64 times or 68. Do you want me to count? I'm pretty sure it's 64 further. And it just says really really really times 64 good marketing. But to say a statement like that you can't be wishy-washy on who you are. You know, I could have said we will increase revenue by, you know, 400%. Or you will get this and you will have, you know, uh, look at all of our customer satisfaction. This is what we have instead of us just showing up and being ourselves. And it's people pick it up, they laugh at it, and it leads to calls.

59:43like there's everything about that from a personality standpoint and a branding standpoint is genuine and worthwhile. The cool part is as well is that it didn't take a lot of effort. Like I was just around one day in in Figma and decided I'm just going to type out really 64 times and it's going to be hilarious. It's going to be our business card. Oh, is it 68? Okay. Well, it's 60. It's like a 8 by8 and then there's like four more and then it says good marketing. But yeah, yeah, I love these things. These are like fun to hand out to people and they're like, "Oh, this cool." I was like, "Yeah, impression. I had multiple people email me about them and complimenting them." So, they were really, really, really,

1:00:29really, really, really good. I knew it. Yeah. Um, okay. We've been talking for a while. Um, so we're going to wrap up, but this was super awesome. I love doing like an like a more in-depth focus on, you know, one of our um our uh areas of expertise. So, that was really fun. Thank you, Zach, for all the insights. Um and yeah, um excited for this. Stay tuned for what we got next time. It's going to be great. And uh thanks for listening. We'll talk to you guys later. [Music]