This Is The #1 Question That Entrepreneurs Have When Making Content...

Do not make a logo. Don't go into business if you can't solve an actual problem for somebody. A logo is great, but it's a symbol for what you do. It's not what you do. Where is your ideal client living online? Go there. If you like guitars, the algorithm knows you like guitars. Pick a couple of those posts that perform well, run some ads, boost those posts, join all the local business Facebook groups. Yes.

People sleep on those. That has helped us so much.

Start a podcast. It doesn't have to be fancy. The point is to make genuine connections with other people in the community. What questions are they asking? Make answers to those questions. Make that type of content and consistently show up in front of them every single day.

A black and white logo is like so boring to me.

There is a thing called the psychology of colors within marketing that I would recommend everybody go research. Every color stands for something different.

Hey guys, we thought about doing something a little different for this podcast, and so we've asked you, and we've also just gotten a lot of questions from people that we're working with on developing a brand on just random things.

So we have a cup of mystery here.

I've written them down and I've put them in here because this is the teacher in me that I'm ever so missing. And so I've written them down and I'm gonna ask Darren. I'm gonna kind of put you in the hot seat. There may be one or two for me, but For real, this is going to be a little mini episode and just have some fun and put you on the spot. Are you ready?

I was born to be on the spot.

Oh wow, coffee much? Okay, well, I'm already skipping. Okay, here we go. Do I create a logo first, or what do you think is the most important first step in building a brand?

Building a brand, the first step is actually— okay, a logo is great. But it's a symbol for what you do. It's not what you do.

Okay, so how would you encourage that?

I would encourage you to figure out who you're serving and what you're going to be doing for them. What problem are you going to be solving for them? If you can't figure out those two things, the logo will not make a difference.

You don't need to be making a logo if you don't have that figured out.

Do not make a logo. Don't go into business if you can't solve an actual problem for somebody.

Sage, come on, brother.

That would be my answer to that question.

Straight to the point. You heard it, folks. Darren's brutally honest, um, answer. Anyway, here we go. Question number 2: How do I niche down and create targeted content?

Okay, so this is going to feed off of the first question. Once you have who you're going to help and what you're going to help them with, with the— what problem are you going to solve for them? That's the type of content you need to be thinking about making. So you're gonna have to figure out where is your ideal client living online. Go there. What are they watching? Make that type of content. What questions are they asking? Make answers to those questions.

Good.

Make that type of content and consistently show up in front of them every single day. And that's how you become super targeted towards who you're trying to reach, because the algorithm is not dumb. The algorithm now on all the platforms feeds the type of content that you want to see. The user— if you like guitars, the algorithm knows you like guitars.

So it will freaky—

it will bring videos to you. And it doesn't matter how many followers you have, how many subscribers you have. There's channels who have 500 subscribers but go off and get 500,000 views on YouTube because it's reaching a very specific audience and the algorithm knows what audience you're reaching.

So let's make up a business right now. Um, so let's say I just went to cosmetology school.

I just moved to— anything else?

Hey, I just went to cosmetology school. I just moved to the area. I don't know anybody in Abilene. So I'm wanting to build my brand and get out there. Okay, so what would you coach me to do? Like, my first steps in a new city, don't know anybody, and I'm just now starting to serve.

I would say try to go and go to some networking events, go to other people's stores and network first of all. See if you can—

so like me go in their store and be like, hey, I'm new to the area, like I cut hair.

Like, hey, how can we collab? Well, pick an industry that has something to do, okay, with what you do. So like, if you're going and opening up a tire shop, go to a local dealership that sells cars and see if they'll do a collab with you. Say, hey, I'm doing this free ad, I'm making a video, would you guys want to collaborate? And maybe we can go in on it together. So that way you can start getting in front of people who have been there before for a while, and you get in front of their audience who already trust that brand. So you want to associate yourself with other brands that people trust around the area, and they already know, and they already know.

Yeah, so that's great advice.

Be a good step to do first. Second of all, you may obviously double down on content and do targeting, like geography targeting within your posts to your specific town. Pick a couple of those posts that perform well, run some ads, boost those posts.

Did you just say run ads? You never say run ads.

After a couple weeks, do that. I'm not saying spend $1,000 on ads. A lot of people waste a lot of money on ads, but put out content like normal, pick the ones that perform the best, get the highest views, highest engagement, go and put $100 for that week on one of the videos and target it on Facebook and Instagram. Target it specifically towards the audience you're trying to reach.

That's good. I think too, like, putting yourself in the viewer's shoes is really helpful. So like, in that instance, if I was a cosmetologist I'm thinking to myself, okay, if I wasn't the cosmetologist and I was wanting to go get my hair done, what kind of content would I like to see from a stylist that helps me trust? Because I mean, they're like doing your hair, like they gotta have your trust. They want to know like who you are, maybe like day in the life video. So I don't know, like think about what you want to watch and then create that content.

Yeah, also some more stuff, practical stuff, join all the local business Facebook groups. Yes, people sleep on those.

That has helped us so much.

Yes, so join all the Facebook groups you can. Be active, comment on people's posts. Don't just ask for things, provide value, um, in those, uh, groups. Um, another thing— well, there was one more thing. Oh, start a podcast. Oh, sorry.

Okay, listen, this is controversial because I'm over here thinking, not everybody needs to start a podcast.

Hey, really quick, I wanted to let you guys know about a 5-day challenge. It's called 5-Day Build Loop Video Challenge that we put together exactly for you, because if you're watching this, you're probably an entrepreneur, a business person, or a creator who's looking to monetize. And so if that's you, there's going to be a link in the description. We're going to be going over all of the things that I've learned and took away over the last 4 or 5 years to figure out how to make content work for your business and not against your business. And so for us, this is how we get about 90% of our clients within our business. And it's 10x, sometimes 100x our engagement and views and even leads. Same exact thing goes for all of our clients. And so if you're interested in this, click the link below and apply today. There's only a limited number of spots because it is one-on-one. And so hope to see you in the challenge. Let's get back to the episode. Listen, If you're all— if you know, if you're going to a new city and you know nobody, you're gonna have to get creative and get out of your comfort zone to get out there. Nobody's just gonna walk by your store and just— you're not gonna have lines out the door just because you moved here. A thing you could do is start a podcast. It doesn't have to be fancy. It really doesn't even have to be the greatest quality at the beginning. The point is to make genuine connections with other people in the community. If you invite somebody, another business owner or your ideal client on your podcast, it gives you an opportunity for an hour to sit down and talk with them. Then it opens up that connection, builds that relationship, and say they know 10 other people who have a good relationship with them. Now you have a connection to those people as well.

Okay, I'm hitting the red buzzer. I feel like we've spent too long on this question.

Okay, that was gas. That was fire advice. Just saying.

Good job.

Just saying. Okay, next.

Oh, how do I figure out— which I don't know if we've covered this, maybe we already just covered this— how do I figure out who my target audience is?

Um, who do you want to help? Who are you helping? Like, that's really what it boils down to. And that discovery process—

who needs your service?

Yeah, that's a discovery process in itself, figuring out who are you going to be serving, because you can't serve everybody. So you want to pick one type of person. We call it an avatar. What, what does your perfect avatar look like? Describe it, write it down, do some market research on what do business owners like to do for fun? Where are they at? Where are they hanging out? What are they— where do they go for resources? Where do they go to learn things? That's just my example. But once you can narrow in, okay, you try a few different niches, you've worked with some different people. Once you figure out, okay, you're going to, you're going to notice really quick that you like working on certain projects more than other projects for sure. And so take note of this. And I would say after trial and error for about 6 months, after you've tried some different things, you'll have a better idea of who and why you want to serve them.

Okay, I love it. Short and simple. One more. Wow, this is fun. Okay, how do I find the right colors, fonts, and vibe for my brand?

What would your advice for that My advice—

so it sounds like they're trying to really like— maybe this is that like vision stage in business and branding. The question: how do I find the right colors, fonts, vibe for my brand? Like, it really sounds like they're trying to put it together from like square one.

How do I figure out what colors, fonts, and vibes? Um, I don't know. I don't know. You may be able to answer this question better. I rarely focus on fonts or think about— because I'm so content-minded that, like, as far as the video side goes, yeah, you're like, the logo is the last thing you're thinking of. The logo could look— I mean, obviously you want it to look good and you want it to give a professional and like a legitimate vibe. That's really the main thing for me. It's like we want to look like a legitimate business.

Yeah.

So I don't know, what are your thoughts?

I don't know, I think it's really important, um, just as like the outside person. Like, I think there was a big like uprising when Canva started coming out and like all of the logos looked the exact same from the templates. Yes, from templates. And it was just getting boring. Like, I don't know, like Yes, it's your brand and your, you know, your logo and everything, but it just— they all started to look the same. So I would encourage you, um, for a certain vibe or whatever, it all depends on what you're trying to, you know, convey to the person. But like, if you're wanting to be like fun and spunky, like I think of my, like my personality, having a black and white brand to me, like I say, I keep using the word brand. I feel like I'm using that incorrectly. On the Brand Builders Podcast. Logos. Let's talk about logos. A black and white logo is like so boring to me. Like, or like a Microsoft, like blue, just like something like that is just literally like, I don't want to stare at it anymore. So if I was building a brand, I want it to convey personality, joy. And so like we've even talked about like the colors and how like there is a—

okay, so a couple of things on the Canva side of things. Canva is a great resource, great tool, but since it has come out, there has been a new standard of logo creation and what that looks like. Because there are so many templates, it makes it so easy for people to just plug in and use— they just change the, the word to their name and just use that as their logo. For sure, it's great, it's awesome, until everybody does it. So then you're going to have to go and differentiate yourself a little bit. Not for the fact of differentiating yourself, but for the fact that you show your clients that you care more about your business than the average Joe. If it— if you can portray that, hey, we spent some good time, thought, energy, and money on this design, then it's going to mean It's gonna subconsciously give the viewer the idea that you are going to treat them better than the other companies as well. You're gonna treat—

you care about it—

your clients better because you care about your stuff more.

For sure. So let me kind of walk you through real quick what I did. And so I do art on the side, um, I really enjoy doing art, and I had previously had a page and my logo was just like cursive black letters with a white background and nothing was wrong with that. I like the minimal, but also like, I know I'm painting, like I'm doing art, a lot of florals, a lot of bright colors. And so I rebranded, changed my name and everything. And I still like, if you follow me on Instagram, you will see like I'm still changing my logo. Like I haven't been like, I don't know, I'm still trying to figure it out. I'm trying to see what I like, but I've totally made it my own. Like I bought fonts from an artist, like I did. I didn't want a Canva copy and paste. Um, and so I don't know, I— my steps and processes that I took: went on— uh, not Canva— went on Pinterest, built a vision board. Okay, what colors do I like? What stands out to me? What other brands do I like? And what do I like about them? Um, so I just started building a board. Okay, so there's a lot of fonts that I was drawn to, color palettes, um, merch, because eventually, like, that would be really cool to have, right? So what are my ideas? And then I took that and just kind of got you can go hire a graphic designer, but I wanted to play with it myself and I just came up with something. And so I don't know, I think when choosing your colors, your fonts and your vibe, just let it speak who you are and what you want to convey. If you are a law firm, you probably won't have neon. I mean, if you do, I'd probably use you. Neon pink, like bright, all this stuff. So you do what speaks like who you are and what you want to convey.

I think also to remember that you can go and look for inspiration from other people and other businesses. That helps me tremendously, not only with like logo stuff, but it's how am I going to model my business, how am I going to function, how am I going to price things, how am I going to— just something to go as like, oh, you can go and look at that and take away things you like. Yeah, don't copy, but take away the things that you like from that specific thing or company and try to incorporate it somehow within your stuff. And once you do this with about 10 different things with your own taste, you're going to develop your brand. And then as far as picking the colors goes, there is a thing called the psychology of colors within marketing that I would recommend everybody go research. But for example, the color red portrays an emotion of anger. Interesting.

So do you— TJ Maxx does not make me feel angry.

So do you want—

Target does not make me feel angry.

Well, it just depends on the context.

Just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

So do you want to be portrayed— like, that is something to think about. That's why stop signs are red, because it's like, hey, stop, don't go.

Yeah, alerts.

No go. Not a good thing to go unless you stop.

So that's what you think about TJ Maxx?

No. Oh yeah, I mean, yeah. Noted.

Okay, you know who does that really, really well? La La Land Coffee. Shout out La La. Like, their brand is insane. Like, their actual coffee shop is like yellow, it's fun. Their whole— like, I'm an— I'm analyzing their brand like as a customer, but like, they want to portray joy. They want you to leave lighter and brighter than when you walked in. Like, their employees, they— I don't know if they're paid, they're paid to compliment you, but like when you get your coffee, like literally it's served with like some inspiring comment or like something. And but like all their logos, everything's bright yellow, like they just want you to have a taste of sunshine.

So yellow is like bright joy. Yeah, that sort of thing. Every color stands for something different. I love it. Um, I think, and I could be completely wrong, it's been a while since I looked at these, but like green Success, like go, like yes, good. These are the things that people associate green with.

I feel like we're having a traffic lesson.

So like on YouTube thumbnails as an example, this is also something to remember. Don't put, I made $50,000 in this week, but put it in red text on your thumbnail. Does that make sense?

Mhm. To just frown on this.

If it's a good thing, don't put a negative color on it, and vice versa. Yeah, cuz it just doesn't make sense.

Yeah, I totally get it.

Anyways, that's my take on it. It's very, uh, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I think I probably should.

You don't have time to think about it.

I think I probably should more, but, um, I'm, yeah, running a business.

Yeah, you're doing great. So thanks for being on the hot seat today, Darren.

Hey, absolutely, anytime. I would love to be invited back to my podcast.

Sorry, I'm supposed to be the co-host. I don't know what my role is here on the Brand Builders Podcast. You're emotional support wife.

Um, but you're the business— what did you call it earlier? Business friend?

Business bestie.

Business bestie. Yeah. Biggest supporter.

So, and these weren't like— we didn't do a, like, a Q&A poll or anything, but just questions that we've gotten from people as we've worked with them and just figured we could help and share them with you.

So, yep, hope this episode helped. Make sure to subscribe, check out the links in the description, join our school community, Brand Builders community, completely for free. Check out our 5-day Build with Video Challenge, one-on-one, free to you. Um, and that's pretty much it. We'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.