I never cared about branding, now I'm building a brand that actually matters

Summary

I spent most of my career ignoring branding. I thought it was for design agencies and people who didn’t have anything real to sell. I was wrong, and the moment I had to rebrand from Better Human Business to Better, I had to actually learn this.

branding is not the logo. it’s not the colors. it’s not the font. branding is the clarity of what you do, who you do it for, and what you stand for. everything else is decoration.

I built what I call the Brand Builder Template to fix my own messaging. it forces you to answer:

• who is your customer
• what’s the transformation
• what’s your unique mechanism
• what do you believe that others in your space don’t
• what’s the core promise

the answers became the brand guide. and the brand guide is what makes content generation easy. when you know what you stand for, you never run out of things to say.

the new brand, Better, positions itself as systems-first. helping entrepreneurs build profitable newsletters and durable businesses. the core message: systems beat audience size, and boring ops lead to a bigger life. the hoodie and headphones poem captures the vision. that’s the world I’m building.

Transcript

branding isn’t what you think it is

Your brand is not your hex colors, it’s not your logo, it’s not your font. Look, if you can’t clearly communicate what you do, or if you struggle to come up with ideas for content, those are branding problems. And to be honest, if your brand feels confusing or scattered to you, your customers don’t stand a chance of understanding anything that you do.

So today, I’m going to be going over something I call the Brand Builder Template, and it’s something I put a lot of work into as I’m kind of going through a rebrand from Better Human Business to Better, which I’ll be talking about more and more. But I wanted to pull up the brand guide and actually walk through it step by step.

if you’re confused, your customers are too

I did not actually create this. Someone sent it to me as a template when I was kind of redoing some of the branding I have for Better. And so I wanted to show you a lot of what I worked on and kind of how I’m clearing up my messaging. So let’s dive into all of that today. But here’s the deal. Like on the content side, if you really do struggle with content, and I run into that problem a lot.

Entrepreneurs are telling me, hey, I struggle to come up with content. And I ask them like, okay, what do you do? What do you stand for? What’s your brand about? Like some kind of big question that should lead them down the path. They don’t have great answers for those things. And I think if you were to put into place something like the document I’m about to share, you would understand better how to create content.

the brand builder template (live walkthrough)

And in fact, what I’m going over now is, I mean, it’s lightly scripted. I don’t do word for word scripts for podcasts or YouTubes, but I go into every video with some prep and a framework. That way I have something to clearly communicate to anyone who’s listening, watching all those things. But you know what I have open in a second window when I’m creating scripts or frameworks or outlines for content?

It’s all of my brand notes, my brand guide. That way I just make sure that I’m hitting on it. Because sometimes I might want to go off into left field and, hey, maybe I’ll go on a tangent. But I need to reel it back in and be like, hey, hey, why are people here? Why do people care? Why do I want them to pay attention? How can I help them?

why clear messaging = unlimited content ideas

And that’s what the brand guide does. It makes sure that I’m hitting clear messaging points. And there’s so many things to cover in my messaging and in my brand that I have content ideas for years. So I want to be very clear to my customers. I want you to have very clear messaging for your customers, for your brand, for anything forward facing.

So let’s dive into my brand guide. So I have mine pulled up on the screen. And I will make this make sense whether you’re watching the video version now and you actually see it on my screen or you just got the audio version. Don’t worry, I got you covered. So I’m just going to go over a few of these things.

start here: your positioning statement

If you want to download a copy of this, just like a templated version that will kind of have questions in there to kind of prompt you to answer the next thing. You can actually download that. It’s in the YouTube description here. You can download that on YouTube or Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can get access there. And if you’re having trouble finding anything, just go sign up for the newsletter, which should also be in the description where we give access to all these framework systems tools so you can be a part of it. So here is my final brand guide. And it just has some spots that I want to hit on that I think every entrepreneur should be clear on.

So it starts with positioning. So Better is a systems first brand that helps entrepreneurs grow profitable newsletters, build real businesses, and get their time back. I’ve gotten very clear about the position that we want to take here, and it all starts with the newsletter. I’ve been pushing really hard into newsletters because I really feel like, in all honesty, unknowingly, that’s what I’ve been doing for such a long time is profitable email marketing and email newsletters.

jerred’s brand: from better human business → better

It’s not all I want to talk about. I want to build better humans. I want to build better businesses, operations. I want people to live a bigger life. I want people to be a better version of themselves, be better humans. But it has to start somewhere. There has to be something at the very, very start of that.

And I’ve chosen that to be my positioning as email newsletters because I enjoy writing them. I enjoy teaching people how to do them. And then it gets into what we do. So Better is designed to equip entrepreneurs with tools and community they need to build something that lasts. Entrepreneurship will eat you alive.

”better” starts with newsletters (here’s why)

You need help. We make sure you have a business, not just a job, through ops systems and frameworks. We also make sure you have a life. So as you can see, the more I communicate, the deeper we get into this, the more I understand what we’re doing. I’m not confused. My customers won’t be confused. And then the next section, people have heard of mission and vision before, but I kind of put it as like a manifesto section here.

So the mission is things don’t get easier. You get better. We help. I know a lot of people have, like, these very different missions, but, like, that is ultimately our mission is, like, for a fact things don’t get easier. You just get better, and we want to help you get better in every area of your business and in your life.

mission: things don’t get easier, you get better

And so to kind of whittle that down a little bit more, I said we equip serious entrepreneurs with boring ops that lead to a bigger life. And then, you know, you’ve got to have a vision, all those kind of things. But ultimately I also put in here something else that I wrote several months ago that I just kind of ‑‑ it sums up what I want, and I want other people to know that if they’re chasing, like, this is the goal.

So it’s like a ‑‑ almost like a poem called Hoodie and Headphones. And I’ll read it real quick, but, again, just to kind of put as much personality into my brand as possible. So Hoodies and Headphones goes like this. No stethoscope around my neck, no courtroom to be in today, just a hoodie and headphones.

vision: boring ops, bigger life

No commute, no boss, just a hoodie and headphones. No corner office, no ladder to climb, just a hoodie and headphones. Create value, solve problems, have ideas, move fast, kill comfort, scale. All that’s needed to take over the world, a hoodie and headphones. So you see how this is just part of my vision.

It’s, like, what I want people to understand. It’s what I want other people to be a part of because one thing people talk about when building brands, especially personal brands, is this idea of an aspirational identity. But I could give a shit about traveling to Bali or working two hours a day or, you know, doing any of that crap.

”hoodie and headphones” poem, the aspirational identity

The only things that I want is I want time and financial freedom for my family. I want to be able to go to every single sports practice and games that my kids have. You know, I want to make sure I have time for me to be able to work out, spend time with my wife and have businesses where I feel fulfilled.

But ultimately, I’d say my life is relatively boring, right? Like, I have three kids, and so, like, we have a very structured routine. I’m not going off flying around the world with them, even if we could financially. Like, you know, it’s not the matter of, like, that’s what the limiting factor is.

It’s the fact that I want to be here for them and let them live the lives that they want to live, which involves a lot of sports, being around their friends, those kind of things, right? And so I don’t feel like the aspirational identity is you want to be like me. I want you to be like you, but I want to be able to provide you the systems, operations, and frameworks to be able to live how you want to live and give you the time and financial freedom to do it.

build a brand that gives you time & freedom

And hoodie and headphones, well, the poem doesn’t say all of that. To me, that’s what it encapsulates, and that’s what I want people to understand. Now, just, like, scrolling through some of this, you know, I have kind of my origin story, my three core messages. And I think that these are very important for you to have as a business owner.

My three core messages are you don’t need a massive audience, just an amazing newsletter. You don’t rise to the moment, you fall to your systems. And the only way to live a bigger life is through better ops. I think those are the three drums I’ve been banging pretty hard and only going to get more and more as we go down this branding journey.

the three core messages that drive everything

My core phrase is proven systems to grow profitable newsletters. Try harder, live bigger, boring ops, bigger life. My word that kind of sums me up, boring ops. As boring as it is, the more you can master boring ops, the more time freedom you’ll have. And ultimately, that’s what I want for people and people who are part of this community.

And then it just keeps going. I have brand values, effort, try hard in all things, details, attention to detail, and high quality or paramount, so on and so forth. It gets into the laws of the brand, the tone, the voice, the culture, the tagline, the purpose before and after if you were to work with us.

core phrase, tone, personality, target audience

The personality, the target market gets into all of these things, what my offer is. And then at the very end, I have some brand colors, some fonts, the logo usage, those kind of things. And that’s where people think like that’s the brand guide I need. I need to know what this looks like and feels like.

And yes, to a certain degree, you need to be consistent with your fonts and your colors. You don’t want to be all over the place. You want to look cohesive, and you want to spend some time in having a good logo and all those things. I’m not saying those things aren’t important when it comes to branding, but those aren’t the things that people are going to resonate with.

fonts, colors, logo, last, not first

I don’t think those are the things that really and truly build a brand. Look, I didn’t focus on any of this stuff for years. I was very much in the camp, just go make money. I just need to make money. I don’t really care what the website looks like. I don’t care what the logo is, and I don’t care about any of those things.

I just need to go make money. And hey, I know a lot of entrepreneurs are in the same position. So by all means, go make money. But it doesn’t take you this long, especially with the template I can provide you, to just go knock these things out and understand your own brand, your own positioning, your core messages, core phrases.

branding wasn’t a priority, until it had to be

And that way, when you communicate, you will communicate so clearly, your customers aren’t confused, you’re not confused or scattered, and now everyone understands. And when you go to create content, you can just look at your brand guide. What do I need to communicate? How can I talk about boring ops in a different way?

What other angles of newsletters can I talk about? What mistakes can people avoid? Everything gets so much easier when you truly, truly understand your brand. So let’s get better one day at a time. Start with a brand guide.