Why Buyers Buy: How To Use Psychology To Grow Sales & Build A Brand

So when branding is done really well, your product becomes part of your audience's identity or aspirational identity. So when somebody can identify with a product on that emotional identity level, that's when you know that you're doing it right.

It takes one free person to create change. This is the show for them. We are the creators of the free world. This is capitalism.com and we are the 1%.

Hey, capitalists. Ryan. Daniel Moran here. And in this episode I'm chatting with Kay Putnam about building a branding strategy for your message and for your business. The reason why this is so important is that a lot of entrepreneurs who are building physical product brands or personal followings, who want to sell more product and get more followers and fans struggle with having the foundation in place of what their messaging looks like and how they communicate with their followers and their customers. This is why so many people struggle with building brands or with standing out in the marketplace. If you're selling physical products, it can be easy to believe that you're selling the same thing as somebody else. But if you are so much as targeting someone different, you're a completely different business. And you should have different price points and different messaging and a different way of servicing your customers. And if you don't know that, then you will do things like everyone else. So in this episode, Kay and I attempt to demystify the branding strategy and process and I put her on the hot seat and ask her to help me with some of the challenges that I've had in my own brand strategy. Some of you have been following me for years and have seen my evolution as an entrepreneur. And so I asked Kay to help me develop the consistent brand message and she has a knack for pulling that out of me. If you sell physical products or you're building a personal brand or you are attempting to build an audience in any market or any niche, this is going to help you solidify your talking points and discover how to build a brand that is unique, with followers that choose you over the competition, have higher prices, and have more loyalty in the marketplace. You're really going to enjoy this chat with Kay Putnam. There are two kinds of people in this world. There are members and non members. If you are enjoying this stuff, you have got to join us inside the the 1%. 1% members get access to our courses on building businesses and investing the profits. They get access to experts who are bringing in lessons on a regular basis, some of the best in the world. And they're joining regular calls with myself or members of my team to Keep the community growing. The 1% is a community of entrepreneurs who are actively building businesses and investing the profits. And every month you get a community newsletter to see what's going on in your community and what the opportunities are to create the change that you want to see in your world. Join us@capitalism.com the number one. That's capitalism.com one. Kay Putnam, welcome to the 1%. Thanks for hanging out with us.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to have a geeky chat about branding and business.

Well, my team has nominated you several times for us to chat because your work has impacted our team and the way that we talk about things. Before we go into it too deeply, I was hoping that you could kind of give a high level overview of who you work with and how you help them.

Absolutely. So I call myself the Psychology Driven Brand Strategist. Got into this game by way of marketing. So I started out in marketing, but I kept realizing that there was something underneath the marketing strategies that had a massive impact on whether it worked or whether it didn't. And through a lot of trial and error I realized that that was the brand. So these days I work both with scaling entrepreneurs and businesses who are above six figures, going to seven and beyond in the agency one on one side of my business. And then I also have an education arm where I work with entrepreneurs who are in the earlier stages of business, teaching them all about building a psychology driven brand.

And what the heck does that mean, a psychology driven brand? Kay?

Yes. And in my pursuit of truth and things that actually matter, things that are high leverage, I realize that we're all selling to humans, right? At least I'm going to assume that none of us are selling to aliens at this point. So if we can speak to people on an emotional and gut level where humans make all of their decisions, then the marketing message and our audience building efforts, everything that we're doing to attract attention and grow our businesses works better. So I have a tool that I love to use. They're called brand archetypes that connects each of the brands that I work with to very universal human desires and motivations. And I use that as a jumping off point to build this very emotional.

Like mission driven type of language as opposed to just the logical side of the decision making process.

So what I heard you say was that you help entrepreneurs and brands communicate and position themselves in a way that connects on an emotional level rather than just explaining what you sell. Is that a fair summary?

Yes, exactly. And I needed this for myself because I am A very strategic, logic driven person. And I realized that I was doing all of the strategies like step by step by step and I just wasn't getting the same results as the people that I was learning from. And my clients experienced the same thing. Like there's more to the equation than just the steps.

Yeah. So I am going to pick on one of our tribe members actually who followed some of our work because we've kind of popularized the idea of the three stages to have a $1 million business. The grind, the growth and the gold, which is all about getting those first four products to sell 25 sales a day, which is 100 sales a day. And at $30 price points, that's a million dollar business. And one of our tribe members was complaining once that after they grew past a million, I didn't have a step by step formula to go to from 1 million to 10 million. And I was explaining to this person that that is when it actually requires you to be a real business and know who your customer is. And that's a completely different skill set than just getting a group of products and selling them until you have a million dollar business. And it sounds like what you're saying is that you work with entrepreneurs and businesses to help them find that type of messaging, Is that correct?

Yeah, exactly. This type of work doesn't work really well before you know what you're doing. You have to have some momentum, some forward movement. And it's more of a. It's an equation to scale, like you're saying. It's like once you have a product that's selling, let's create a more effective message around it that's going to sell more of that product. We've already validated the fact that there's a need and there's a spot in the market for you. But now let's shift more of that demand and also give you greater pricing power by improving your brand.

Yeah. It's been my experience that if you know exactly who the person is, rather than just what the product it is that you're selling, you're able to communicate with them in a way that allows you to raise your prices. That gives you more brands, more of a brand moat, more of protection against competition, because you can be selling the same thing as someone else, but targeting completely different people and meeting different emotional needs with the same product, which gives you differentiation in the marketplace.

Exactly. So when branding is done really well, your product becomes part of your audience's identity or aspirational identity. So when somebody can identify with a product on that emotional identity level, that's when you know that you're doing it right.

So, Kay, I would like to dive into this with a little bit of an example and I'm hoping you can lead the example. Would you like to share with us either an example from someone that you've worked with, or we can just role play on something here? How would you like to do this?

Let's do it maybe a few different ways. So one of the examples that might just solidify what we're talking about here is to look at an existing market. I am a huge fan of ice cream. I think I'm even a little bit lactose intolerant, but don't let that stop me. So when you think about ice cream, it has the same basic product attributes, right? Like it's made out of milk and sugar, whatever. But the way that ice cream brands are able to differentiate and to win over larger market shares is by creating this brand affinity through the psychology driven branding. So Haagen Dazs ice cream, for example, is a lover brand archetype, which is connected to sensuality and pleasure. And all of their ad, all of their messaging supports that idea of like taking a break for yourself at. It's almost like self care through ice cream, if you will. And then in contrast, if you look at Ben and Jerry's, they have this irreverent political message where they're making people laugh. It's more of an entertainer brand and they're connecting to the people that connect to that like, emotion and that gut feeling. So in many ways you might be either a Haagen Dazs person or a Ben and Jerry's person. So that's the kind of differentiation and power that the branding can give to you. And then by way of a deeper example, let's talk about perhaps one of my clients. So a recent client is a watch brand. So they're bringing a product in that generally has the same attributes and generally the same level of quality, generally the same level of design. But they have to differentiate in a market that's already relatively crowded. Right. There's movement that's doing amazing things. There's all of the established players that are doing amazing things. So when we set out, we had to create a brand that was going to be different enough that it was going to appeal to a different set of people, like to a different audience. And we can walk through that process a little bit, if you want to do that.

Yeah, I would love that. That's where I was going next. So if somebody is going through this process of selling things and they see all the competitors ahead of them. How do they start to find that for themselves? So let's go there.

Yeah. So you can do it one of two ways. When you're an E commerce business, you have a little bit more leeway. You can be more strategic about your decision about that positioning that you're going to occupy. Because you can look at, okay, these are the list of substitutions or competitors that people might be considering at the same time, or if they're in that market for whatever product you're selling. And then you can try to find one that is like, in between. Right. But my preference is actually to lean into the natural, inborn, innate traits that the founder has, because you're going to naturally create messages that are in line with your archetype. And it's not. It's hard to do that. You're not like putting on a character. You're just being more of yourself in that process. So I typically have my entrepreneurs take the brand archetype quiz that's on my site to help them narrow down on their top two archetypes. It just gives us a shared language to talk about these kind of like, big and ethereal ideas, like, oh, is your brand going to stand for love? Or being in the present moment and laughing. People don't make that decision very naturally, easily. So we have this tool to help us get to that answer. And then once we know what the desired emotional response is that we're trying to create in the market. So we've honed in on that unique position by way of personality, not by way of that people normally think about differentiation or positioning. Then we start to think about, okay, how does this show up in the images that we're going to use to promote our product? What kind of language can we use that elevates the generic and makes it more of an enjoyable experience for our clients? And literally touch point by touch point, we apply those principles and those ideas to every piece of the brand.

So I heard a couple things in there. He said, if you're an E commerce business, then you have one of two options and one was to go out and the other was to go in. Going out. You are looking at who your competitors are and who they're targeting and what their language is and carving out your own space. And that's usually what I teach e commerce business owners to do, which is to find to go out into the customer and decide who the customer is and base the brand around who's already purchasing your products. And you're saying there's another way too, and it's to go inward, into the founder, into the company values of what it believes to be true and to speak from that place, knowing that you're going to start attracting the type of customers that resonate with that. And you were also saying that there's a lot of different options to go there, so you try to narrow it into a few in order to bring that in a little bit closer. That correct?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a psycho or it's a human tendency. I feel like with a lot of the clients that I work with. When you're doing that, only that outward facing response or that fact finding mission, it can be really easy to get into a trap of spinning and feeling like everything's already been done or that you're comparing yourself to people that are leading the market, that have been doing this for years. So it can feel hard to find your own voice. Sometimes it works really well to flip it inward because then all of your messaging becomes self segmentation. You're going to start attracting people that naturally resonate with the messages that you're putting out if they're true to who you already are.

That makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense that when you start going outward, it's easy to just compare yourself to what's been done in the past. But if you go inward, then it's always some sort of unique messaging because no two people are alike. So when you have done that, when you are, let me ask you this, how do you go about healing that out of someone? If they've been in business for a couple of years and they have thousands of customers and they've got a business that is at least somewhat successful or in motion, how are you then going in and peeling back the layers to find out what the branding is that the founder's been carrying them, carrying with them the whole time?

Yeah, yeah. For my one on one process, it's an interview process. And those interview questions look a lot different than probably what other people are asking them. It's like, okay, if you were to write out a list of belief statements that are not necessarily related to your business or your industry, what do you actually believe? Like what do you believe about success? What do you believe about work life balance? What do you believe about capitalism? Like, what do you believe about these things that humans already care about so that we can create messaging around the things that are relevant to your business. So it's pretty much, it's like a Personal interview more than about the products. And then a lot of times, we naturally bring our strengths to work. So it's just a matter of reflecting on what are you unnaturally good at and how can we do more of that?

Hmm. Tell me why you go into what the person is naturally good, good at. How does that factor into the branding?

Mm. So I believe that every entrepreneur, every founder, has genius trapped in our brains. But often when we're trying to define what that is ourselves, it's really hard to see ourselves clearly. So I like to spend time like, are you naturally. And this goes. I'm kind of a personality quiz junkie, as you might guess, based on the fact that I have a personality quiz for brands. So when we're uncovering those natural strengths that these entrepreneurs have, we're looking for things like, are you empathetic? Like, do you know what people are feeling? Or maybe you're a super analytical and you're a very, like, strategic left brain mind. Like, how can we bring that into your brand in a way that is going to resonate with your ideal clients on the same way that they resonate with their friends or the people that they come into contact with in their daily lives? Because when you think about it, relationships are built on you being who you are, not being like this shapeshifter in different situations. And it's also built on shared values. So we create that type of identity for the brand so that you're connecting with people at that level.

I actually took a big, like, breath of relief when you were saying that, because I think we all know at some level that in our friendships and our personal lives, the most healthy ones are when you're fully yourself and you connect with somebody else who is fully themselves. And we're not seeking love or approval from the way that we project ourselves, but from us relaxing into who we really are. And you're essentially saying that when you take that type of approach and you create clear branding around it that communicates who you are, it allows the right customers to come to you and sink into the brand, which is really, really great for a business's growth and the founder's happiness. So, Kay, I would like to put you on the spot if you're comfortable with it. My audience, some of them, have been following me for years as I have kind of navigated this journey. Would it be okay if I put you on the spot and asked you to rapid fire brand me?

Yes, let's do that. So typically, in a client process, let's do this. Typically, I would have you start with that brand quiz? Because it gives me this shortcut into understanding who you are. So I'm just going to give that as a caveat.

But yeah. So I've taken the quiz. Kay. And I think I'm going to stump you because I am 25% on four different archetypes. So I'm 25% girl guy next door, which is really weird and ironic. Hey, ladies. I'm the guy next door. Magician brand Royalty brand and sage brand. I don't know what any of these mean, but the fact that equal across all of them is very bothersome to me. So please ninja this.

Yes, yes. So I affectionately call people that get the equal 4 results. My divergent people, which is a movie reference from some teen. Teen drama movie. So none of you are going to get it, but that's okay. So I'm going to talk through just briefly what those four mean. And then after, I'd love to hear which one resonates or which two resonate the most with you.

Okay, I'm ready.

Guy next door is all about building community. So you're clearly doing that here with your current brand. And it's about building community where you're all kind of like linking arms together and figuring things out together. There's also an element of kind of distrusting the man or the authority. So that. That's the guy next door. You're very relatable if you're this archetype and very accessible. I'm going to contrast that with the royal because they are almost at odds with each other. Right. So you have relatable and accessible on one hand. And then the royal archetype in some senses is the exact opposite. You hold extremely high standards for yourself and you expect everybody else to live up to those high standards. And you also lead by example. So you are the one that's out front doing, you know, being the success. And then people get inspired and they want some of that for themselves, so they join your. So it's also community oriented, but your position in the community is different. Either you're out front leading or you're one of the guys gals along with them.

Question, do those things conflict with one another?

They do. So you have to almost choose one or the other, at least in terms of your position within the community. Like are you going to own that unapologetic leadership that the royal has or is it more important for you to be one of the guys and to have that position within your community? So that might be a good place to start. To choose between one of those two? Yeah.

Well, from, from my everyday life perspective, I like to be one of the guys. From a branding perspective, I like to think of myself as a leader. And when I am one of the guys, I naturally emerge as the leader among that community. So I have an easy time leading the community and also building the community because I just naturally tend to lead when I'm comfortable in that setting. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. I would have pinned you more as a royal than the guy next door. I think that you have achieved incredible things in your business and by teaching others how to do similar things or like minded things, you're cultivating this community of people who are all rising and, and who are all becoming more successful as a result of being around you and learning from you and your ecosystem that you've built. Yeah, I like that a lot. Magician is all about change and transformation, particularly with your inner power. So it's kind of like that idea that you've had the power all along. You just had to tap into it. And it's the magician brands are the types of brands that create almost like magical level results. People look to you almost as like a guru, but not in the bad, not in the bad sense of that word. It's almost like I want some of what he's having because he's clearly getting much better results than everybody else. The magician archetype brands also have a very unique methodology for achieving those results. So they often use tools that are kind of out there, if you will, they're not commonplace to get the results that they're creating. And then to contrast it, Sage is, you can have magician, sage brands. Those are my two archetypes, actually. But sage, instead of looking for inner wisdom, it goes out and it finds the proven methods. It's the logic driven. Take these steps, you know, find the truth and you'll be successful. So if I were guessing your brand, the two archetypes, I would hone in on royal and on Sage. To me, that is what you stand for. You create this very logical system for people to succeed, and that's the royal and the sage in you.

Okay, so I want to poke one hole in this. None of this left room for what I would just call fun. It sounded very, like very serious. And.

I like the royal branding, but I also like to thumb my nose at the rest of the system. So does that fall into any of these brand archetypes or do we kind of just need to carve out space for that?

You can do either. So we all connect with all 12 of the archetypes. So there's going to be varying degrees of all of them in us. And I always like to tell people that you do have veto power. So even if you take the quiz and you get results, you can pick one of the other 12 that there are. And there is a brand archetype that's called entertainer. So if you think about like Old Spice, like deodorant and body wash brand, they're clearly an entertainer archetype brand. So if you want to lead with that, you could lean into that archetype like we were mentioning before, the guy next door does have some of that like thumbing the nose of your to convention or to. To the authority. It's almost like in other contexts the guy next door is called the orphan because the systems kind of failed them. So like going to college, getting the job, whatever. Like the things that you're told to do haven't made you successful and you have this other way. So I could see that being a really strong message if you leaned into the guy next door as opposed to the royal.

Got it. Okay, so where do you take clients or confused people like me into kind of the next stage. Great. Like I know how I think of myself now. What the heck do I do with this?

Yes. So that's when we start to audit your messaging. So we make the decision first. Okay, so let's say that you're going to be the guy next door and the stage and you have some sprinkles of probably some entertainer and humor in your brand as well. So that being reflected in your client onboarding process, is that being reflected in your ads, is that being reflected in the things that you're talking about on your video series or on Instagram and going piece by piece by piece? I'd love to hear from you, Ryan. Where are some places in your business where you're already.

Giving or creating community, not just in your product suite, but in the way that you're marketing?

Yeah. I would call our content very inclusive in the sense of. I think one of my skill sets is making high complex ideas relatable to every man or every woman. And I think that naturally creates a sense of community. We have our in person event once a year which is called the Capitalism conference. And the biggest piece of feedback that we get is that people feel like they belong when they're there, that it doesn't feel like an ego fest. It feels very normalizing and so everyone kind of feels like they have their place. I'm very engaged with my followers, I will sometimes do late night posts on Instagram where I am phoning up people and just answering questions. And that's really fun. And half. About half of our podcast content is me just hanging with the audience, answering their questions and helping them with their challenges. So that's how I would say we're creating community.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I'm totally going back on what I said earlier. I'm actually seeing a lot more guy next door. And I mean, even look at the way that you're dressed, like you're in a casual shirt. It's not like you're showing up to these interviews in a suit and tie. You're not showing off your.

Rolex watch to inspire people to climb.

And watch.

What was that?

It's a Garmin watch. A Rolex doesn't tell me how many steps I took that day.

Yeah, exactly. So the more that you can be that relatable guy and to show that everybody can succeed.

Because you're including them in this process, the better.

Yeah, I love that. I love that about your brand.

Let me ask you something. Kay. So.

Politics aside, royalty is more of a Trump branding, more of aspirational, the best of the best, like, fall in line with what I've built for you and aspire to be like this high end kind of branding. Is that what you mean by royalty?

100%, yes.

Okay. So I really like that, but it does not feel natural to me. So it's like I want that for myself, but trying to make that for myself feels very forced. And so I would say if that's kind of the angle on that, then I would say that's not. I am more guy next door in that case.

Yep, that's a key, key point. Thank you so much for voicing that, because that's the point, or that's the situation that so many entrepreneurs find themselves in. They're looking out into their market and they're like, okay, I like this. So I'm going to try to do that. But when it feels forced, it's never as powerful and as potent as it could be as you being naturally who you are. So I love that realization because I bet you'll look back on some of the stuff that you've been doing in your branding or just in your marketing, and you're going to see like, oh, yeah, I was trying to put that hat on here in this post. Like, I was trying to be that person, but it just doesn't feel right. Like it's not as powerful as I Could be because I'm trying to be what I think other people need me to be.

That's exactly how I feel. So here's what's going on for me internally as you're saying this. If I were to really lean into this guy next door sage brand combo, then the way that that would play out for me is that my products and services would look a lot like taking the people from our community that I've connected with and showing behind the curtain what has worked really well for them to get the results that they got. Even though those individuals don't feel like they're qualified to have a platform or don't feel like they're an expert in that. And what I've kind of done in the past was more seeking out experts and making their expertise more relatable to common, common man or woman. And that's been great. But if I were to really lean into it, then I'd be going to my community and bringing out the best of them and what has worked behind the scenes for them. And that would kind of create this culture of. Even if you don't think of yourself as someone who loves the limelight or somebody who loves the sage, or somebody who is a royal person who has everything figured out, you still have something to share that is beneficial to other people. That's how I'm internalizing, how I think it would play out if I really leaned into what you're saying. My positioning is totally.

It's like power to the people. Right. And then also the guy next door has an element of vulnerability or like imperfectness. It's like more focused on imperfect action than always showing up super polished and at the end result. So I imagine that people are going to connect more and more deeply with you the more you show that behind the scenes, it's not necessarily at the end, finished stage, but acknowledging that journey along the way of the mistakes, the things that happened that didn't go quite as planned, and sharing that knowledge with people, not just the successes.

Yeah, this makes a ton of sense. What would be next in the process, after kind of identifying my standard archetype, evaluating how I'm showing up in that archetype, what would we typically do from there?

Yeah. Next we would be looking at all of the outward facing cues. So all of those touch points that we talked about earlier that we took a look at and audited to see how they're doing, then let's actually go in and upgrade them. And let's use things like color psychology or design psychology, because design is a language in itself to communicate the guy next door and the sage. So we won't dive super deep in the weeds with that. But you can have design styles that are more relatable ones that don't feel like a Vogue magazine or a Rolex, they feel more like the guy next door. So we would look at the different decisions that you're making with your word choices, with your design and create standards that now fit your archetypes better. And then once you have those standards, then you can empower your team to be on brand no matter where they're showing up.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Now Kay, if I was selling physical products as an e commerce entrepreneur, how does this process change? Because this is obvious for a personal brand or like a personality driven brand like capitalism.com is. But how does this change? Or is it the same when it comes to selling stuff?

It's the same except for the fact that the face of the founder and the personality of the founder might not be the front lines. Right. So it might actually be your product that becomes the character in your ideal clients lives. Meaning when you think about say like Tom's shoes, they have a caregiver archetype and their messaging, their colors, all of the different touch points you come into contact with, they're all communicating that same personality, even though you don't know maybe the founder, the face of that brand. So it's the same process. It's just not the person that's showing.

Up, it's the product that makes sense. And with kind of all the different tools that we have available to us now with social media, content creation and distribution, Amazon, Shopify, Facebook ads. Where do you help people hone in on where they should put their attention once they know who they are and how they're showing up for the rest of the world.

Yeah. So my perhaps my own brand challenge is that your brand needs to be reflected in all of those places. So when we're working with clients, we're doing things like building websites and templates for social media. But the standards that we create really need to be lived out on every single platform. So what I focus on is basically creating your brand into a system that can be applied to wherever you're marketing. So I don't get too deep into like, okay, here's how to create the perfect Facebook ad. But I talk about, here are the language that is on brand for you, here's the design styles that are on brand for you. Let's reflect that in all the places that you're showing Up.

Yeah, got it.

K. Where do you see people really get this process wrong?

I think it goes back to what we were talking about before. It's like if you spend all of your energy and all of your attention on what everybody else is doing, we end up with this convoluted, deluded sense of self. We're just taking like, okay, I'm gonna borrow their Facebook ad strategy or borrow their design style. I've had clients before that have literally copied the colors and logo style of a competitor because they thought that that would be successful for them as well. But when you're not unique and differentiated in the market, then you're losing out on a massive opportunity to win your own rabidly enthused audience.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think it's so easy to fall into the trap or the belief that you are going after the exact same people as your competitors, rather than believing that there are people who will resonate more with a message that is unique to you versus the message that is so predominantly placed in the marketplace. Would you speak to that?

Yeah. My core belief is that there are so many people who want to buy what you're selling. It's your job to show up in the most powerful way possible. And there's more people coming online every single day in the next five or ten years. As you guys all know, the rest of the world is all coming online, so there is more than enough consumers and buyers for all of us. But the only way that you're going to connect with the people that you really like to sell to and like to serve is if you have a unique voice among all of the noise that's in the market.

You've said the word scale several times in our time together, and I'm curious why you use that word. Because.

We don't tend to think of, at least in, like, the e commerce Internet marketing world as brand and scale being in the same conversation. At least not the conversations I have. So what do you mean when you say the word scale? Why does that enter into your language?

Yeah, it comes back down to trust. And trust is built through your brand with consistency. So once you decide what your core message is, how it's going to be produced, if you're scaling with either a larger team or if you're scaling with expanding the number of platforms that you're on, if you don't have a consistent presence on all of those different places, it's almost like you keep going on a first date with new people that come into contact with you. But if you have a consistent brand and if you have standards that allows you to scale those relationships, meaning you get to the marriage part like you get to the part where people really love and trust you because they know what you stand for and they recognize you in the market. So that's where scaling to me is so important when it comes to your brand. Because if you're just like hodgepodging, like scotch taping, everything together, but it feels like a different company every time people come into contact with you, you're losing that brand equity that could be built.

Yeah, that makes sense. And to make this relatable to those of you who are E commerce entrepreneurs, this is. I've described this as so many of you are going after new customer after new customer after new customer rather than doubling down on the people who have already chosen you. Most especially Amazon entrepreneurs are so focused on where they rank to get new customers that they completely ignore all the people who have already chosen them in the past. And so they never build the muscle of speaking in a consistent way, which comes across in your listings, in your follow up processes, in your packaging, in your social media posts. And so they're instead kind of flying by night rather than building a foundation of something that can scale that. They're obsessed with the strategy behind social media, rather than taking a stand for who they are and who their customers are and what their brand message is. So they never attract the people that would find them off of Amazon or off of Shopify or off of Facebook ads. If you don't do that, you never pick up a word of mouth coefficiency, meaning you have no viral component to it. You can't create content that attracts your ideal people. It makes it very difficult to create ads that convert. And so if any of these things are challenges for you, it means that you're not communicating effectively, which comes back to the fact that you're probably trying to sell more stuff rather than double down on who you are and who your customer is. Kay, would you agree with that assessment?

100% branding done. Well, it's almost like a planet's gravity. So like you, you collect this like, audience that orbits around you. If you have a brand message that is worth sticking around and paying attention to and that in turn reduces the cost per sale because you now have repeat customers, right? So you don't have to keep attracting people one by one into your orbit. They stick around and they continue to buy because they like you. And it also takes you creating some of that content or some of those reasons for people to stick around. And that can be directed by your brand message and the position that you've decided on with your brand strategy.

Okay. This month inside the 1%, we're talking a lot about building audience and building followers and raving fans. And I was hoping you could comment on how branding and positioning plays a role in developing raving fans and followers.

Mm. So same or similar to you having a unique voice, you're gonna talk about unique things as a brand. So if we think about Red Bull energy drinks, they're a maverick brand archetype. So it's related to that thrill seeking, that convention breaking thing that humans desire. So in turn, their content strategy is focused around extreme sports. And people visit the Red Bull website just to watch their incredible videos. They've given us a reason to stick around beyond just the fact that they sell a highly caffeinated drink. Right. So building additional context around your brand with content that's going to make it stickier, increase that orbit. Like we were saying that people want to stay in your. In your area for longer. So that's the role that I see that the brand plays.

Yeah. And when it comes to personality driven brands or personality driven businesses, when you're looking at social media or you're looking at regular content creation, my guess is the way that you are, you're helping people develop that audience and that raving fan base is by consistently speaking to those core values and that core messaging that you discover in that branding process. Is there anything else that you add into that process?

Just a reminder that what your brand is, it's context around like the meat and potatoes. So for me, as a branding expert, I can talk about brand strategy all day long, but you can also get information about brand strategy in a textbook or in a Google search. So it's my brand's job to wrap that content with a desirable context. So people want to learn from me versus just a general Google search. And the same goes for product based businesses as well. So you're not going to be talking about just.

Whatever widget you're selling. You're creating a context around it that people want to stick around for. And that's your brand.

Yeah. Kay. I am highly enjoying this conversation. And so I know we've kind of gone into the weeds of myself and my own journey. So I want to pause for a second and say, is there anything that I haven't asked you that I should.

Not. I should have a great answer for that question, but I don't. I just, I want to encourage people that they are Doing such important work, like entrepreneurs are so incredible and we're providing such a brilliant and needed service for this world. So keep, keep at it. Like, keep building your brand because the world needs you, especially now. And I'm just so proud that I got to show up here and help you grow your brand and hopefully reach more people.

And I'll add to that that because the world needs leaders and entrepreneurs and capitalists, it needs you to know who and how you create change. The world needs to hear that clarity from you about how you help them and what change you create so that it can show up for you. Because it's one thing to be doing good work or selling good products or to be offering good prices or being good to your people. It's another to communicate it well so that the people who benefit the most show up the fastest and bring other people to them. I think as capitalists and entrepreneurs, we often get lost in the grind of what we're getting out of it, how much we're making, how much attention we're getting, the accolades that we're receiving. And those are all byproducts of you doing really good work. And part of really good work is you being able to communicate it to the people who would benefit the most from it. And when you do those things, then everything else is added onto you as well. Kay, I really enjoyed this conversation. Where do people find more of your work?

I am a good Internet marketer, so if you search my name, Kay Putnam, you'll find all sorts of free resources and content. But I am most known for my brand quiz that we've talked about here on this call, and that's over@kputnam.com.

Cool. Well, Kay, thank you very much for hanging out with us. I really enjoyed this.

Thank you so much for having me.

You bet.

And that's a wrap. That was fun.

Yay. Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.

You bet. That was really fun.

I know that in the nuts and bolts of E commerce branding, sometimes it feels like just like the frosting on the top. So I really appreciate you bringing it to people's attention because it really can make a massive difference.

Yeah, it really can. People discount it because they don't see the immediate result from it, but it's a long dollar business. You need it more and you don't realize that you need it because you're used to just thinking about the next win and the next one and the next one. Yeah. Great. I would like for you to send me your client rates because we have a. We have a challenge specifically with. That was really helpful to be able to do this with the royalty brand. It was like we kind of feel like we have to, but it was like, actually, no, we don't really need to. If we just go all in on kind of guy next door branding of making the inaccessible accessible, that's kind of.

I love that.

But where we struggle is getting it to show up specifically in design. I think our languaging is pretty darn good for it. But in design and templates, I think we kind of. We do more what looks good right now rather than what reflects that overall branding. So I'd love to talk with you a little bit on that.

Yeah, that would be amazing. You guys have almost like a little bit of a maverick sense. Like with the red and the things that you're doing on there, I think that it could be tweaked a bit. And obviously there's always the discussion of like, let's preserve the brand equity that you have. Like, don't just scrap everything and start over. But I bet there's things that you could do that would help communicate that better to people so that when they first come into contact with you, they're like, oh, I get it. I know what, this guy's super.

Yeah, we'd love that. We'd love that.

Amazing. Yeah, I'll send over some information.

Great. All right. Kayl, it's great to meet you. Thanks for hanging out with us. Sorry.

Or thanks for dealing with my coughing situation.

You bet. All right, we'll talk later.

Yep.

Thank you. Bye. It's almost here. My first book, 12 months to 1 million, is available for pre order and it drops on May 5th. If we've ever had a meaningful exchange virtually or in person or something else, please go over to Amazon.com, search for my name, Ryan Moran, and place a Pre order for 12 months to 1 million. This is 18 months in the making and it features you features our community people from the podcast who used this stuff to build successful businesses. And in it, I outline the formula I give. It's everything. It's just do exactly this process and you'll be on the path to building a meaningful business. So 12 months to 1 million drops on May 5th. Go over to Amazon, search my name and place a pre order. It would mean the world to me. Thanks so much.