How To Build A Brand, Not Just A Business (2025) | Brand Builders Podcast Ep. #3 | Full Episode

Everybody has a brand, like personal, like physically and online. And online you can reach a lot more people. The way that I live my life is a brand, and I like to think of it the same as like being a disciple for the Lord. And it's like everything that we do, do it for the glory of God. People follow a face more than a brand. So first of all, you need to get on at least 3 platforms, and for the first 30 days you need to be posting every single day. So I would say there's 3 big things that you want to focus on.

Hey guys, welcome to the Brand Builders Podcast. Today we're gonna be picking the one and only Darren Pacheco's brain on branding and all that comes with it. So we're gonna dive right in.

Yes, it's one of my favorite topics, and we may be wearing the same outfits because we're batch shooting. If you've watched any of our YouTube, we're batch shooting, so just shoot all your stuff at the same time. Anyways, let's, let's get it. I'm on a tangent today, by the way.

So the first question I'm gonna ask you today, our topic is branding, okay? All about brands. What do brands look like? What do people need to know about brands? What do they need to quit doing with their brand? So let me just ask you to start us off with what is the definition of a brand?

Luckily, I love talking about brands.

I know you do.

That's all we talk about is content and brands. So question number 1, you said, what is a brand?

Yep, what is it?

So there's 3 different things that I, I want you to think about whenever we're talking about brands. Number 1, brand is what you are perceived at a public level. And so this is like, what does the public or the— your audience see you as? Like, how do, how do they see you? Do they see you as an authority? Do they see you as a startup business? How, how do you represent yourself online and even in person too? Like, you're— you— everybody has a brand. Yeah, like personal, like physically and online. And online you can reach a lot more people, but everybody has a brand. Number 2 is what faces, products, and results your clients associate you with.

Break that down a little bit.

And so the faces, like, what faces do your clients associate you with? With Howdy, they probably associate me and my face with Howdy, which is— they do— which is how I've designed it.

Yeah.

And so we're doing what's called a founder-led, like, creative marketing plan. And so the founder is the face of the company. Some people and brands have people on staff or like somebody who is designated to be the face of the brand. I'm a big fan of the founder and the CEO doing it because they know everything about the brand. They, they're the ones who started it. They know everything that they want to put out into the world and the products that they want.

Well, and this may be cheesy, but you literally like live and breathe This is like your baby.

You're proud of it. Like, my life revolved— like, it doesn't— what do you say— it doesn't define me. It's not who I am, but my life is my brand in a way.

Yeah. And so when you're proud of something, it's easy to promote it and walk it out. So I think people see that.

Yeah. For me, like, I go home and I'm still thinking about this stuff, even though, like we talked about in the first episode, home and work balance, but there is an element of like, I'm always brainstorming in the back of my mind things I can do better, things we can do next, content that we can put out, how we can help certain clients. And so the way that I live my life is a brand. And I like to think of it the same as like being a disciple for the Lord. And it's like everything that we do, do it for the glory of God. And so your brand representing Jesus is how you live your life. And so it's the same way. And same principles that apply to building a business or a family or putting out a product. Just live your life in a way that you want people to respect and associate you with. And so number 3 on that is the feeling people get when talking about or working with you. And so if somebody, if there's somebody down at the coffee shop who's having a conversation about maybe potentially getting into some video projects, or help, needing help with marketing, like, are people talking about you, first of all? And second of all, what are they saying about you when you're not in the room? And so are you reliable?

Are you efficient? Are you respectful?

Whenever you did work with this person who's sharing now by word of mouth, did you do a good job? Yeah, because if you do a bad job, that can ruin your, your reputation and your brand. And so make sure to dial in whatever it is that you're providing. To your clients.

It's so good. I'm already learning stuff because when I think of the word brand, I just think of logo.

Logo. So people follow— I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Thanks for setting me up right there. People follow a face more than a brand. Um, if somebody's not going to follow you on Instagram or YouTube because of your logo, they follow you because of your personality.

And so I don't know, there's some pretty aesthetic logos.

There is aesthetic logos, and I think that's important. We have a great logo designed by my lovely wife. But thanks, that's not the sole reason that people want to follow us and work with us.

Absolutely.

It's because we deliver results and we deliver great quality products and we communicate and we just do a good job overall. So that's what I think a brand is.

Okay, cool. Question number 2, um, I just want to ask, I think a lot of people could benefit from this, is what piece of advice would you give to somebody that's starting their own business developing their brand? So like the very beginner, they're starting, they have this idea, how can they execute their brand?

Yeah, so what I did, I just started spraying content everywhere on the internet at the beginning, and it eventually worked, but it took longer than it probably should have. And so after doing that for the last 4 years, if you are just starting a brand or a business, these are some of the important things that I would recommend you do. So first of all, you need to get on at least 3 platforms, and for the first 30 days, you need to be posting every single day.

What platforms would you recommend for the beginner?

It depends if you're a B2B— what business? So B2B is business to business company.

Okay, this is why I'm here. I am the advocate for you guys because— did y'all know B2B?

I didn't. A B2B business is whenever— so we are a B2B business. Okay, we are a business that serves other businesses, and so that's our main client is other business owners and businesses. B2C is business to consumer. So like, this is like Amazon. Amazon is going directly to the consumer saying, hey, you can buy this directly from us.

Thank God for Amazon.

And so you got to decide and figure out which one of those you actually are. Um, and for example, if you're a B2B business, you want to get on platforms where other business owners are. One of the top ones is LinkedIn, which I know nothing about. LinkedIn is specific. It's the social media for corporate people.

Yeah. Okay. And put yourself out there with other businesses.

Yeah. You're specific. I mean, you can reach out specifically to managers, directors, CEOs. All that information is there. And so if you're B2B, focus on LinkedIn, YouTube, and I would say Instagram or Facebook. Hey guys, I hope you are enjoying today's episode. Today's episode is actually sponsored by Brand Builders, the community. This is a community for builders who are business owners and creatives who are wanting to maximize their content to create as many clients as possible and build the biggest brands that they possibly can. In this community, you're going to get access to weekly live Zoom calls. You're going to be able to access our Howdy team as well as multiple different influencers who have gone through the thing. And so if this interests you at all, there's going to be a link in the description to check out more. Hope to see you in there. Let's get back to the episode.

I feel like YouTube is a surprising one. A lot of people, and I may be wrong, but see YouTube and posting on YouTube is very intimidating. Like they automatically don't have enough equipment to do it. It's not produced well enough. How do I upload? It takes too long to upload. So why is YouTube important?

So YouTube is a beast and that's really our main focus for us is YouTube and LinkedIn because we are B2B. And so our whole strategy is start with the long form and that can feed all of your other content. It's called repurposing. And you do this using AI tools, editors.

And that's what we encourage people to do in the studios too. They think, oh, making content is so complicated. And we encourage them to come in. They do a long form like a podcast or like a video. And we break it up into tons of reels or smaller videos that they can shoot across all those platforms.

Absolutely. So if you start off with a video, let's just take this podcast, for example, we're talking about building a brand. What we can then do after this is go and take this long-form video, use AI to cut it up into short clips, use AI to take the transcription, write a newsletter, write an email that you can blast out to your email list, write a blog. You can write an article. You can do all of these things just from this one YouTube video. And so it's driving all the rest of your marketing. Yeah, that's what I like to do. Get on 3 platforms. Sorry, if you're B2C, which is business to consumer, I would probably focus on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.

Cool.

Um, Snapchat honestly is a good B2C. I've never got too deep with Snapchat, but I've seen a lot of people get a lot of good results with Snapchat. Um, so when they're developing their brand, you said to post on 3 platforms and post every day for 30 days, no matter what it is that they're posting.

Wow.

You just need to just post every single day for the first 30 days to get your name out there and to get the reps in.

Okay.

Because you're not going to start getting good at making videos and figuring out what works until you hit that 100-video mark.

So as far as branding, do you feel like videos, um, videos are the way to go for content?

Yeah, so you want it to be about 90% video.

Okay, of, of that person or that business?

Whatever it is, you and your face needs to probably be in it too. Majority of the time there are faceless methods and that type of thing.

I have seen so much positive though from you doing that with Howdy. Like for instance, I was at a burger joint in Abilene the other day and I, there was a person sitting next to us and he kind of overheard us talking with my family and introduced himself and I said, oh, I'm Katie Pacheco. And he goes, oh, you're Darren Pacheco's wife. And I was like, How do you know my husband? He's like, oh, I see him on Facebook all the time with the Howdy videos. And so like, boom, like I've never met that person, but they saw you and they met you through.

Yeah, absolutely. So you need to be in the content as much as possible. Cool. That way they start associating you with your brand and what you offer. That first 30 days, you're just going to be posting and seeing what works and getting the feel of what content works and does good on social, because at the beginning, nobody's probably going to see it. And so you might as well get your reps in and your practice practice when nobody's watching. That way, down the road, whenever people do start following you and do start seeing your videos, you've actually gotten pretty good at doing it.

Cool.

So that's my advice for there. Um, the second thing, you need to get a base— basic website. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. I, I think honestly the new website is your social platforms. Um, unless you're selling something specifically like a product. Yeah, you don't— you just need somewhere in some way for them to get in contact with you. That's the whole thing. And if a website helps you do it, then build a website. The last thing I'm going to answer on this question is prioritize relationships over money. So at the beginning, there's going to be a lot of things that come up for like free. And especially if you're a service-based business, do the free things at the beginning because not only are you building a good relationship, You're getting a good testimonial, you're getting a good quality product if you do well and execute. And so that's worth way more in the long run than $100 is. And so prioritize relationships over money, even if that means you lose money. Like, develop the relationships because you never know, that relationship could open a door to a way bigger one. Like, you were just one phone call away from getting your life completely changed.

So in that point, you're, you're talking mainly about the importance of relationships over some of the things that we immediately think of with like branding and marketing. It's like, are you talking about like spending money or what?

I'm talking about if you— whenever you are building a business and you're selling a product or service, don't focus on the profit that you make at the very beginning.

Gotcha. Okay.

Because you want to think of it as a long-term thing. Yes. And so to build a sustainable long-term business, you have to build relationships first.

Yeah.

Because that's going to take you way further than making an extra $100.

Yeah, and it being organic too. Like when you're out making those relationships, I feel like it's way easier for people to trust you and what you're doing than if you just start cold calling them. They've never seen or met you before.

Yeah, conversion rates go out the roof once you have that relationship built. And that's why I'm such a big fan of videos because that's the closest thing that you can get from like other than being face to face in the same room.

Yeah.

As to where, like, they can get to know you. If somebody watches this podcast for an hour, they feel like they get to know you because they can see you, they can hear you, they can see what tone you're using. Yeah. And they can actually decide whether or not you're a trustworthy source very quickly. Very quickly on, on video, because it's hard to hide. Like, you can't just fake something for an hour long. On YouTube.

Yeah.

And so that's one reason I'm a big fan of videos, because it's the biggest and fastest way to multiply yourself so that you can be building relationships with others while you're not even in the room.

Smart. I love that. So summarize those 3 things real quick.

So get on 3 platforms, post every day for the first 30 days, and keep going beyond 30 days if you can. Get a basic website and prioritize relationships over money.

Love it. Okay, moving on, which I feel like you kind of just hit on some of these, but what are the most important components of a successful brand?

So I would say there's 3 big things that you want to focus on. The first being your online presence.

Yes.

And obviously you do that through content and that's what we teach is like organic content. You can do paid stuff, but only do paid whenever the organic works well and you know what you're doing. Or else you're gonna be wasting money. Make sure you have a good online presence. That means your website, your social platforms, you're present and you're consistently posting and showing up.

Yeah.

Next thing, you're— in order to have a legitimate business, you're gonna want to start building your email list as soon as possible. And emails are not talked about as much And it's not like a sexy topic, like you're just getting their email and sending email campaigns, but it's important because let's say all the platforms, if they were to disappear tomorrow, you have no access to your audience whatsoever. But if you have built an email list and you've migrated them over from the platforms, you still have your whole business and all of your potential clients, man, right there.

That's something right there that I've never thought about. If all the platforms went away and you were a business that was relying on consumers.

Or you think about TikTok whenever it was getting banned for— it got banned for like a day.

All the influencers freaked out.

Yep.

Well, think of it now that— which we talked about this the other day— influencers and all this, um, ambassador programs and all this kind of stuff is such a huge part of our economy now. And so when all that goes away, those relationships are there. Your website's never going to go away.

It's worthless if it disappears. And so, wow, you're dependent on this platform. To reach your audience. If you have an email list, you're not dependent on the platform anymore. And so to create a long-term lasting, not relationship, but a business, make sure to focus on that email list. And the last thing I would say is to deliver on your promises. Deliver a quality product, deliver something that people remember, because word of mouth is going to go way further than majority of things would.

Yeah, that's good. Okay, I love that. So I feel like, um, this next question I'm about to ask you is one that, like I said earlier, when I was thinking of branding, I think I'm thinking of logos, I'm thinking of, um, when I think of like Howdy, like do they have cool merch? Like how are you out there, you know? And so does aesthetic matter within your brand?

I think aesthetic matters up to a certain point just to show that you care about what you're putting out there. Okay. If you just put some like Microsoft Paint graphics, like nobody's going to— unless you do it strategically. I've seen ads that do that, but they're not going to take you serious if you don't take your brand serious.

Yeah.

And so they won't believe that you can deliver a quality product if you don't believe in your own brand. That's good. So all that matters whenever you're creating content is create what your consumers want to see, create what your audience wants to see. Don't create content for yourself for selfish reasons. This is why whenever I'll take real estate agents as an example, because there's a lot of this that goes around. Yeah. And it's just, it did work in 2017, 2018, and then TikTok came along and completely changed everything. But whenever you put just like a Canva graphic or like an ad saying, hey, I'm a realtor, buy from me, or a flyer with the house, yeah, nobody, no, they, nobody gets value out of that. And so people are on, on social media to get entertained or educated.

Yeah.

And it does neither of those things. Like It's just saying, hey, buy a house from me. I have this for sale. I want to make a commission. Yeah.

Well, I think you mentioned the TikTok, and I think immediately I think you said real estate, for example, that guy that was like, he's in front of the house and he's like, come with me 15 seconds through this house. And he's like sprinting up and down the stairs and like, like a quick tour. I saw the house and I was interested, you know, and it just like drew me in so much more. So you're saying right now you think branding and aesthetic Canva doesn't always convert. No, all those, all those, like, you know, making it all look good. And I'm not gonna lie, I feel like I've spent hours creating those posts sometimes, whenever really you could just take a video of yourself.

Yeah, I had this guy I was talking to the other day, he, he was like, every time I post something about my business or like stats about something going on in the marketplace or something it's just a camo graphic. He's like, it gets like 2 likes. Yeah, but then I post a picture or video of me riding a bike in the evening and it gets like hundreds of views. And so like, what's the difference? People don't want to be sold to again. Like they just want to get on social media to either be educated or entertained.

Yeah.

And so you can do that on all the platforms and you just need to kind of— you can, you can do both. I've done both. I like to do a lot of educational, and when you do educational, majority of the time you don't get as much traction online. But if you're reaching the right audience, it can do a world of difference in your business. And so if you can figure out a hybrid way to connect and combine the entertaining— entertainment side and the education side, that's whenever you can reach a lot of people and get a lot of clients.

So To kind of summarize that point, what I feel like you're saying is aesthetic is important to an extent. Yes, but it shouldn't be all we focus on.

You should focus on aesthetic like maybe 5%.

Wow.

The other 95% needs to be on the type of content that you're putting out.

I feel like we have that so flipped around.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

A lot of people do, and especially around here in West Texas where we're about 5 years behind what the modern metroplexes are doing.

That's the truth. Okay, so I feel like this so easily flows into our last question for the day, and it just says, what are the common mistakes that we see in branding today? So you see, and you're like, um, yeah.

So I'll use an example of kind of this. It kind of ties into the last one, but like, we go to the local theater here and the ads are like so boring, so corporate, like no personality. It's just a logo with music with some B-roll. It doesn't convert. It doesn't do anything. Like, it's useless. They're wasting their money paying whoever's creating this, whether it's AI or a person. And so you have the wrong focus. Like, you're either focusing on the wrong type of content, you're focusing on the wrong platforms, or you're focusing on the wrong ideal client. Um, and so, like, you gotta find who actually would buy your product and where are they located? Once you figure that out, that's when you're going to have the right focus. And then you do that also through the different platforms like we talked about earlier, the B2C versus the B2B. Okay. Focus on the type of content.

Yeah, I love that. That's good. Well, we hope you guys got something out of today's episode as we dove into branding and just a couple of questions we had about it.