Building a Brand That Works: Insights from Experts Rachel Allen and Solveig Petch

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue Strategies and their 10X ROI B2B Growth Guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne. And today I'm excited to welcome 2 guests, but from one company. So Triple Diamond Brand Development is the brainchild of Solveig Petsch, who goes by Petschy, and she's gonna share some of her background and expertise with us today, as well as Rachel Allen. So Petschy is a value-centered, whip-smart brand strategist who spent the past 20-plus years creating remarkable branding for the quietly rebellious for businesses all over the world. And Rachel is a fast-thinking, deeply nerdy marketer— those are her words, not mine— with 15+ years of broad-ranging experience providing heart-led, data-driven outreach for businesses and nonprofits. So Rachel, Petchy, thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having us.

Yeah, so I'm so interested to get into our conversation. Tell us a little bit about how the two of you sort of came together. From our earlier conversations, I No, you kind of played different roles on the team there at Triple Diamond. Tell us about that.

Yeah, well, we had sort of swam in the same circles for, gosh, what, 10 years, maybe?

Something like that.

Yeah, we'd had a lot of like clients in common. We'd known a bunch of people. And finally, we had the brilliant idea. We're like, hey, we do work that complements each other really well. What if we did that together? And we ended up working together on a couple of projects and it just flowed incredibly well. And so we were like, hey, we should do this for real. And that's how Triple Diamond came about.

Oh, that's great. So what exactly do you guys do there at Triple Diamond? Because, you know, brand is, it's kind of, can be kind of a big nebulous space. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs, operators in the B2B space especially have had the experience of, you know, working with someone that kind of does marketing for marketing's sake or maybe, you know, spends hours and hours obsessing on this color blue versus that color blue. They don't always understand what's the value of a brand or what a brand is. So tell us a little bit about that and how that connects to your work.

Well, I think the really great thing about this collaboration between Rachael and myself is the fact that we have such an overlap in our expertise. So we are both strategists at heart. And so we put a lot of work into that underlying strategic brand foundation. But then we go off and do our separate things and where I take the strategic insights and turn them into brand identities, like the visuals and what you actually see. Rachel has this knack of, you just, I don't know, I don't know how she does it. It's kind of magic. Words just fall out of her brain. And There's something that just happens when we get together in a room alongside with the client because they play such an integral part to this as well. And it's every time I'm amazed because we go into these strategy sessions and it starts off messy, like really messy. And you think, what on earth is gonna come from this? And then after we've kind of emptied our brains onto the table, that's when all of the little golden nuggets start to emerge and we're like, oh wow, look at that, look at that. And that's the magic. So that's, I think, the strength in combining our areas of expertise. Wouldn't you agree, Rachel?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's something what we talk about on our website actually, and it just came so naturally. I was like, well, individually we're brilliant at what we do, but there's something completely different, like a different dimension that comes together when we work together and when we have that client there as well, which is Why it's actually called Triple Diamond as opposed to Double Diamond, because, you know, there's the two of us, but the client is so important to the process. It just doesn't happen without them.

That's really interesting. So let's get a little bit tactical. So what is a brand? So, you know, this is a term that's not always really clearly defined. How do you define it there at Triple Diamond?

Well, I have a way of describing what a brand is. Well, I think we all know what a brand isn't by now, at least if you've been in business for a while, you know that, you know, just having a logo and some colors isn't enough to call it a brand. But when I talk to people about branding, I like to distinguish between a brand and the act of branding because they're very different things. And a brand is not just what you see on the surface level. It's what people think about you. It's what people feel when they interact with your brand. It's like all of those little touch points and the combined impression that they make on your audience or the people that come into contact with your brand. And you really can't control that 100%, which is a bit scary.

But then everyone that interacts with you has their own takeaway from it, right?

So yeah, because it's also subjective, right? And like what one person could see red and think that means one thing, and it brings up an emotion for them. But the next person, they could get a different emotion from seeing the same color or from reading the same words. So that's why you just, there's no way that you can be in control of your brand at all points. But that's where branding comes in. So the act of branding is, it's all of those little things that you do to try and steer people's perception of your brand in the right direction to where you want them. So it's like everything from, yes, your brand identity and your logo and your colors and all of that, but it's also your verbal identity, your tone of voice and your brand personality and how you come across when you communicate. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that reminds me of, you know, some of the things that we see so often is by really defining you know, a niche of, you know, who you serve and the ideal customer profile and really understanding the types of companies that you're working with, as well as the sort of personas of different people on the, you know, sort of buying committee, whether it's the decision maker or the champion or technical influencers. That's what gives you sort of an understanding of the marketplace and how they're likely to interpret red or how they're likely to interpret a certain turn of phrase. And so you can use the colors and Imagery and turns of phrase, it's gonna resonate with that specific market in a specific way, but only if you take the time to really know that market and, and to really know who those people are rather than just sort of basing it on your own assessment of, I like this color or I like this turn of phrase. It's really about that market.

And speaking of like personas and stuff, if I can just like add a little note there. I think also beware not to fall into the trap of just creating a persona, making it up out of thin air because like that was a big thing in marketing for a long while and it just doesn't really work because it's a made-up person. Instead, like you could have personas but try to make it up based off of real people because after all, we're all humans and And so you've probably had like someone that you've worked with that you really enjoyed working with or that you resonated with or that your values aligned. And then you can use those people to create those personas. So that's just a little extra tip there.

Yeah, I'm so glad you added that. That's one of my very favorite soapboxes to get up on the internet and scream about. I actually wrote an ebook way back when called Kill Your Client Avatar because I was so annoyed by people being like, my ideal client is the buyer on the board and they play golf twice a week and whatever. I'm like, that doesn't tell me anything about them. What do care about? Who do they love? What actually motivates them to make business decisions? Like, that's so much more important than what kind of cereal they have in the morning.

Yeah, that's so true. Well, and, and also one of the things that we see oftentimes in working with companies is they've defined their, you know, ideal client profile by who they really want to work with, whether that person, whether that company type exists in the real world or whether that person exists in the real world. They describe what they really want. Not who actually exists. And then so we do an exercise with companies where to define their ideal, you know, client profile, we look at who, you know, represented 80% of your revenues over the last 24 months. That's your tier one ideal client. Like whether you like it or not, that's who represents your ideal client. Now, how do we describe that company in a way that's tangible and targetable and segmentable so that we can actually go out and then, you know, have some messaging to them? And then, you know, we always, you know, really emphasize you know, the persona of the buyer again to, you know, not just be who you want it to be, but who it actually is. And one of the ways that we get at that is we do interviews with, you know, sort of the folks that have been the buyers or the champions, the decision makers that they've worked with over the last couple of years to get that real voice of the customer. What are some other ways that the two of you work to sort of bring in that real-world representation of the customer?

I mean, we do interviews as well. We do survey work and pull keywords out of that. We also, we ask the client, we do exercises with them and we ask them like, who have you enjoyed working with? I know, Petja, you were pulling this out, like, you know, who have your ideal clients been? Who has been your ideal business relationship? And then I know on my like super nerdy side of things, I think a lot about like the neuroscience science of motivation and what motivates people just in general as humans, because I think it's so easy to get really wrapped up in your head and be like, but how could I possibly know what this decision maker is going to decide? And it's like, well, how do you decide things? You know, all people, we all are motivated by largely the same things.

Yeah, that, that's a really interesting perspective and bringing that sort of psychology into it. I can See how that adds a lot of value. So thinking, speaking of value and sort of the value of a brand, you know, a lot of businesses, they're so busy with just kind of running and they've got an idea and they're trying to build and deliver that idea. And, you know, maybe they don't take the time to really think through their, their brand strategy from the start. So first off, you know, what are the, the kind of steps that go into really having a brand strategy instead of just, well, You know, pay somebody on Fiverr to, you know, make a logo and, and decide my colors for me and then pay somebody else to take that and put it on a website. What, what are the real steps to having a brand strategy? And then what's the value of that when brands take the time or companies take the time to build that brand as an asset upfront rather than just, you know, kind of throwing something up there to as a placeholder and then I'll, I'll get to that later after I've got some customers. Talk to us a little bit about the, the process and the value of, of taking the time to do that.

Well, I'd say that the first step for any business definitely is just to acknowledge that you are gonna have to do some work. You're gonna have to do some really hard inner work. Like, you're gonna have to think and it's gonna be deep and it's gonna be gory and messy. And you're not just gonna be able to load it all over to a designer that you found on Fiverr. Because it's your brand and you need to take ownership of it. So I think that's the first and most important step is that you have to be ready and you have to be willing and prepared to actually put in some work.

Yeah, I was actually just gonna kick it over to you and say, talk about the steps, Petchy. I was gonna talk about the cost, but I know that when we have people come in, it is a very like, it's a messy process to begin with. That's why our process is actually 3 months long. I know a lot of people are like, brand in a day, brand in a week, and that just doesn't work. Humans don't process that fast. We don't think that fast. So we start out with a month of, uh, just getting everything out on the table, everything from my brain, your brain, client's brain, everything. And like you said, it is, it's kind of messy the first couple of times. It's like, I don't know, maybe it's not gonna happen this time, but it always does. And then once I have all of that out, then Petchy and I go away and apply our expertise to it. Um, and we really sit down and create that strategy and think about how we, how we make all all this mean something?

So we are kind of strict with our clients, aren't we? We kind of force them to think about the questions that they don't really want to dig too deep into because it's uncomfortable. So we ask them all these things about values and we challenge them because like when most of my clients come to me and we get to the sort of, oh, let's talk about your brand values, they all want to pick these safe and generic values and they all, oh, we're innovative or we're sustainable or we're professional. And I'm like, well, yeah, you and every other business in this world. So we challenge our clients throughout the process as well, like to pick brand values that really actually matter and that will make an impact. We challenge them to think about where they want to go and where they are now. And then we look at like, what's the gap between where they are now and where they want to be? And how can we use brand strategy to bridge that gap because that's really what brand strategy is. It's like figuring out where you are, where you wanna be, and how we're gonna get from A to B.

Interesting. So you just sort of described that it's a lot of hard work that you, you know, you really kind of push your clients on finding things that are authentic and real and meaningful and valuable to the marketplace. So What's the value of putting in that work? So, you know, for it to play the devil's advocate of that founder who's like, I don't have the time to do that work, or I just don't have the emotional fortitude to do that work. I'm just gonna skip it. What's the cost of not doing it? What's the value of doing it?

I mean, I think in terms of cost, and this may sound dramatic, but I really do believe it's true. It's the, you risk losing your business if you don't have a strong brand that's going to attract people to you. your business is most likely not going to succeed. We know from the statistics, you know, the majority of them do fail within the first 5 years.

Yeah.

And so that's, I mean, I think that's the primary risk. You risk the business. If you manage to sort of limp along and survive, then you have already set yourself up for exponentially increasing expenses as you go because your brand isn't strong enough to actually attract people to you. So you have to go out and chase them all the time. And that's exhausting and that's expensive. And that's where we see businesses that have a lot of churn. So you'll have, uh, maybe you, you put out 100 proposals a quarter. Fantastic. But if you're landing 3 people, not great.

Right.

So it's, it's a good way to end up doing a lot of work for not a lot of return. And it gets progressively more expensive the longer you put it off. So let's say that you've just gotten, let's say, Series B funding. Fantastic. That's great. And you're like, well, we could probably just outsource this whole branding thing. It doesn't really matter, except when that next round of funding comes along, it's like, oh man, now we need like a really strong brand. And now we're so much further down into this. So there's so much more cleanup to do. We've like gotten these ideas in our head about what we think our customers want, but we're not really sure. So now we got to clean that up. So it just ends up being this big tangled mess that gets progressively worse the longer you put it off. So there's a lot of financial costs. There's a lot of risk. There's a lot of emotional costs because then you're like, oh man, my business should be so much more successful than this. Why doesn't anyone like it? So I understand the, I guess the learning curve, the hesitancy to be like, I don't wanna sit down and think about what I really care about cuz that's slow and tiring and means I have to think about myself. But—

And I just wanna make money.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And like, uh, what's the whole ship fast, fail fast, right?

Right.

Whatever. But we're not all launching an app. If you're doing a business that involves working with other humans, which spoiler alert, we all are, even if you are building an app. You can't really ship fast and fail fast with a brand. You need to get that solid foundation in, which is why what we do, we call it building legacy brands. When we work with people, we build brands that last the duration of the business. It's not something where you just get like a goofy little first brand out there and it kind of looks terrible, but people love you anyway for some reason. And then you get better and better. It's like, nope, let's get it right the first time. Let's save you a ton of money and so much heartache over the long run.

That's really interesting. And you make a really great point there and something that I think is often overlooked. And, you know, a lot of times people are like, well, I'm not in B2C. I don't have to worry about my brand because that's, that's something that B2C folks do. And B2B people are only making decisions based on logic. It's only, you know, the sort of the hard facts of the deal. My brand doesn't really matter. But something that we see so, so frequently is that that's just not true because in the B2B space, there's a, There's another person in that business who's making that business decision, and people are emotional animals. And so they make decisions based on emotion, and having a strong brand can really sort of cut through and make that connection. Do you see that to be true?

Absolutely. I think something that I say to clients a lot is that you don't need to be loud. You just need to be heard because we've been taught that you need— the way that you get business is by being the loudest, by putting out the most proposals, by having the biggest LinkedIn network or whatever. But the way that things are, our business world is just so complex now that all that does is put you in an arms race with whoever has more money than you. And there's always gonna be somebody who's bigger, somebody who has more money, somebody who's actually taken the time to do their brand.

Yeah.

So instead, like, that's a losing proposition. Instead, you need to focus on being heard by the people you actually want to work with. And that's what a brand does. It, it gives them that feeling of like, oh, those are my people. I can trust them. I know what they're doing. It does a lot of the preemptive work of rapport building so that when you do actually put out that proposal or you get on the call or whatever with the people, you're not fighting this uphill battle of, I have to prove to you that I actually care and I know what I'm doing and you have to like me. And then we have all the logical reasons you wanna hire me. The brand's already taking care of the first half of that. And then you can really get into the like, okay, we already know we're cool here. Here's why I'm the best option.

That's really interesting. Well, in that perspective that you know, essentially brand makes everything else much more efficient. You really start to see that financial impact of it because instead of having to outspend your competitors, you're just outperforming them with even a less level, a lower level of spend in advertising or, you know, instead of having to make 100 different proposals to just close 3 of them, you can make 10 proposals and close all 10 of them because you're magnetically attracting the right folks to you who resonate with your approach and then your brand sort of helps you bring that through all the way.

And then doing that hard work that you really didn't want to do in the beginning, it's actually gonna pay off because I think it's something like 83% of people wanna buy from brands that they feel their values aligned. And if you don't know what you stand for, if you don't know like who you are, like how are you gonna communicate that to people?

Right. That's right. Yeah. If you don't know that, if you don't know, they definitely don't know.

And so, and they're gonna make up a story about it and you probably won't like it.

That's right. Well, and, and the other thing that, that happens too is, you know, finding good talent is, is so hard and so tough today. But if you know what you stand for, that becomes one of the things that, you know, sort of attracts other like-minded people. And so then having good talent makes you even more competitive in the marketplace. And, and so one of those really key aspects of a strong brand strategy that's oftentimes overlooked Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with that.

And I think the world of work has become so volatile. I know we've been saying that for like 10 years, but it feels like it's just getting more and more chaotic.

Sure.

And people don't have the same structures to rely on that they previously did in, in their concept of a career. They're going with what they value. They're going with what they feel like gives their life meaning. And to go back to what Patchy said, you know, if you don't know what that is, then you can, you can have all the, you know, beautiful rec rooms and the Friday beers or whatever that you want, but you just won't be able to retain that top talent because there's no heart to it.

And also, if you just make it up because it sounds good, right? People are gonna see through that because you're not gonna follow up on your, like, what you say you're gonna do. You say you stand for this, you say you care about this, but your actions say something else. So once you've actually determined all of, like, the strategic foundations, going out there and marketing is going to be a lot easier because you don't have to pretend and you don't have to think of, like, new things to say all the time. It's like, because it's there, you already have it. You have the kind of a user guide for your business and your brand and a guidebook because you're gonna end up in situations as well where, well, that are less than favorable and someone's probably gonna say something not very nice about you or they're not gonna like you because you've messed up. And like, how are you gonna deal with that? That's also something that we try to talk to our clients about. It's like when you have all of these strategic decisions and you've already made them, you know how to handle a crisis, right?

Exactly. Yeah, you don't have to worry about the complexity of it. You don't have to worry about, you know, whatever situation you run into, you have that foundational answer to it because you've already thought about it.

Yeah. That's so true. Well, and that's one of the things that, you know, when marketing really does their job, they earn their seat at the, you know, sort of the executive table because not only are they sort of the voice of the customer back to the leadership team, but they also, they have this, you know, this guiding light, this North Star, this brand strategy that everyone has agreed to of this is what we stand for. This is why we do what we do, and this is how we do it, and this is who we serve and the way that we serve them. So it really can guide, you know, product decisions as well as, you know, marketing decisions, how you respond to crises and all of those things.

And this is something I see a lot of companies do wrong, actually, where they have their, like, the management is separate from the brand team or the marketing team, although they don't talk together, like, but in reality, all of these should overlap. So you've got your business strategy, you know what you want to do in business. And that should inform your brand strategy. And then in turn, your brand strategy informs your marketing strategy. So it's all like, it's a linear process. So skipping the brand strategy part is gonna make marketing's job a lot harder.

And it also massively backfires if you do have that first thing in the linear where it's just the C-suite is like, I don't know, make the brand look cool. Or make the brand appeal to Gen Z or whatever. Sure, you can do that. And then it's going to absolutely backfire on you because your feedback loop's disrupted. You don't have that stuff coming back from marketing. Marketing is gonna be harder and it's just this chaotic mess.

Yeah. Well, and that, and that's one of the things that we see oftentimes too, is that companies really struggle if they haven't taken the time to build this brand strategy. They're out there, you know, trying to create awareness, but it's awareness that isn't creating demand because they don't know how they're different or, or what the value is for And so then they, they have to work double hard. They gotta create awareness and demand. However, if you've taken the time to build this brand strategy, everything you say differentiates you from other people and magnetically attracts the people that you're for so that you're creating demand as you're creating awareness, which, you know, makes all of your marketing that much more efficient and effective. Awesome. Well, this is a great conversation. Obviously, we could talk about this all day, but I gotta be mindful of your time. So what's something that's on the horizon for Triple Diamond that you're really excited about?

So we haven't announced this yet. If we can, but we are doing some Triple Diamond mixers. We can't— we've created a Triple Diamond cocktail and we were thinking about, you know, ways that we could interact with our audience. And I was trying to think about something I would actually want to show up to because like webinar, absolutely not. Networking event, cocktail party, sure. So we'll be doing some Triple Diamond mixers and it's just invite only people who want to come together and talk about branding while having a delightful cocktail that we've created. And Petchy, do you want to talk through some of our other things?

Yeah, and there's also like a private podcast on the horizon, which we're really excited about. Can't wait to record those. I think we said we were gonna actually do it next week, Rachel, aren't we?

I think so. Yeah.

Well, very exciting. I'm We'll definitely need to learn more about these cocktails you have on the horizon. As an aspiring mixologist myself, I can't wait to learn more about that. But thank you both so much for joining us today. I'm sure our audience learned a lot about brand strategy and the value of that for a business, even in B2B environments. For the folks that have been listening and like, what they're saying makes a lot of sense to me, how can they get in touch with you?

We're real easy to find. So if you look up Triple Diamond on LinkedIn, you can email us at hello@triplediamond.com. You can also look at our website, which is just www.triplediamond.vip. Yeah, I think that's it. Are we anywhere else?

I think that sums it up nicely.

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us. I look forward to continuing the dialogue and hearing more about these upcoming cocktail hours and podcasts.

We'll make sure to send an invite your way.

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