Simple ways to improve your brand marketing and using writing to tackle problems Office hours Ep.1

Welcome, welcome, welcome, my dear friends. This is the first, I think, and hopefully not the last Office Hours. I'm trying this concept. I have no idea if it's gonna work. I have no idea if you guys will like it, but the idea is that what if once in a while I pop up here and help you with questions? Because I have been getting quite a few And I thought it'd be nice to answer 2 or 3 different questions once in a while. Maybe we'll make it a regular show, maybe we won't, but that depends on you. So for those of you who have no idea who I am, hello, my name is Nir Zavaro. For the last 20 years, I've been helping companies and brands scale using storytelling techniques. I started my journey in sales, then in marketing, branding for international snowboard brands and other companies. I did a lot of undercover work. I worked for the government. I opened 4 bars.

Some have really succeeded and one epically failed. I've sold a SaaS platform, which is a story for another time. I've been teaching in colleges and universities for a decade.

I've written 3 books.

The 3rd one is called Fuck the Slides, which is a best-selling book on Amazon about how to create a winning pitch and I'm now in Thailand, the northern part of Thailand, writing my 4th book, which is called— drum rolls— The Business Catcher. And the idea is that I think we're building brands the wrong way. I'm going to talk about it a lot over the next couple of months on my YouTube channel, and I hope you like and enjoy it. And, um, I'm doing a lot of other stuff, but the reason why I wanted to have this first episode is actually because of the business sketch. You see, I met a guy here who's building something pretty amazing, and they've actually been profitable over the last, I think, 4 or 5 months, if I'm not mistaken. Where it begins is that they had an idea, they built a platform, they're starting to work, it's going okay.

The change happens because of the market, not because of the audience, their marketing, And not because of their product. Now they're profitable because the market has changed. And yes, if you're wondering, they're in the crypto industry. Why, why, why do we forget to build a brand? Why do we forget to build the brand? Now they're trying to figure out, and we started talking here in the coworking, and he gave me a mug, which was really nice and really cool. The following day we had another chat, and they've been trying to find their way And how do you get more clients? Now they know their budget and the cost of acquisition is known. I don't want to share all these details, but what's interesting for me is that they're trying different things. They're trying different marketing tactics, but you see, the problem is not with your marketing tactics. Let's say I told you I'll give you a birthday, early birthday gift.

And I'll do your marketing for free for three months. And you know what? Let's say Zuck decided to give you $100,000 and told you every month you can use $100,000, and you can use it for any platform you want. He doesn't care. The problem starts when you're asking someone like me to pick up that megaphone that we call marketing and scream something to the world, to the void, and hope. something sticks. But that's not how it should be. You should have a coherent, coherent, well-written brand identity. And the brand identity means what? A character. A character has an identity. We're misusing this whole concept of what is a brand. Thus, we're stuck with a nice logo, a color palette, and then we're firing all over hoping something sticks. That's why he gave me A cup. Now don't get me wrong, I like having a coffee cup, and it's been sitting here for a few days, so it's free advertising for him.

The problem is the lack of consistency when we don't understand how the brand should behave. And then when we started to talk, um, they're using some sort of an AI-generated woman to help you onboard. Again, lovely, great. But that's not the brand. You need to clearly articulate what that brand character is. Now, if you want to be cool or fun or young woman as a brand, that's great. 99% of the 20-something-year-olds wouldn't give me a mug as their product, right? Or is there merch? It will be something that we might define as cool. What is cool depends on the brand. So try and identify what the brand is, how it behaves, how it talks, the words it likes, the words it doesn't like using. There are a lot more things and it becomes a bit more complex, and that's a huge part of what I'm working on. And I'll tell you a little secret. I've had calls with over 22 companies over the last 2 weeks. None of them has this. All of them are successful. The minimum, the minimum revenue of a company I spoke to, I think, was $2 mil.

Some companies I spoke to had $6, $8, $15, and one company I'm now talking to reached out is gonna reach $100 million in 2025. All of them lack this, so don't worry about it. If you are lacking this, know you're in a good crowd. The next thing is that when I talk to branding agencies, they say, oh, this is an interesting concept. So again, don't worry about it. Start somewhere. Write what that brand is. How do you test it? Simple. If we talk about it internally and you don't argue and you're all in agreement about something, that means that you built a good character. That's how I do it in my novels. Sometimes I don't like what the character wants to do, but it's not up to me anymore, the author. It's up to the character. The character decides. I know we'll talk about it at length on different things. If you have any questions about brands, how to build them, how to structure, how to identify what you need, please, please, please DM me. LinkedIn, YouTube, write a comment wherever we are. I'll try and answer as much as I can. I think it'll be helpful for me just as it will be for you. And don't worry about it.

I don't know if I told you this, I did a workshop over here in Chiang Mai, um, which was nice. 16 people. I did kind of like to help the ecosystem because all the digital nomads are organizing different things. And, and no, I still— I have no idea if I am a digital nomad or not. I don't know. But what I wanted to say is I was teaching intuitive writing and some ideation about how to write or how to look at things, and, um, I got a— an ask which I really loved where someone said, I'm in the cybersecurity industry, I'm pivoting, I want to build a business, but I'm not exactly sure where I'm going, where I should be going. And how would you solve that with writing? So, oh, I forgot my notebook. My notebook is over there. So I did the same exercise this morning, so I feel comfortable talking to you about it. But there's 2 things. One was intuitive writing. Pick a thought, pick an idea, pick a problem, whatever you want. Time yourself for 3 minutes and write. Yes, pen and paper. Crucial, pen and paper. The reason is we're wired completely different between a keyboard and a pen and paper.

And just pick that thing and start going with that thought and see where it takes you, where it leads you. The most important things, okay, you start, you don't stop. Forget about punctuation, changes, mistakes, grammar. Forget about everything.

Let it flow.

Somewhere within the 2-minute mark or so, you start feeling the shift. When you finish, read and see if something pops up. If nothing pops up, most probably you didn't do it the right way and you're overthinking things. So don't. Enjoy it.

If you found something, circle it and say, hmm, this is interesting. Now there's 2 options.

One is you do another intuitive writing session, which isn't easy because Your hand will hurt. The second thing is try and see if you can take this and expand it. What does it mean? Where is it taking you? Why is this happening? How do you think about it?

And one way to look at this is where I'm at, this is where I'm going is I came from here, the origin story. I'm going here. This is the vision. What did What do you think it would look like next week, next month, in a year, in 5 years? Do whatever you want. How do you feel about these things?

Do you need things?

Is it a material thing? Was it a feeling? Great. Reverse engineer from there, and it becomes easier because it's writing. You can add or subtract or delete. Do whatever the fuck you want.

Have fun.

Now. Just like anything else in life, the lighter you become and you don't take it so seriously, your mind will allow you to go to different places. For me, by the way, a big part was that I want to structure my days off because I never take enough time off. True, I travel a lot and I have a lot of wasted time, but only last year when I stopped for a week or so I was in Copanyán on the island. I went to a place called Wonderland for 6 days. I maybe read 2 or 3 chapters in a book, maybe wrote a little bit and had one Zoom call.

That was it.

And guess what? I needed it.

So the next thing was in August, 2 weeks, 16 of us, motorcycles up the Himalaya Mountain to the highest road in the world. So this year, 2025, decided I need to focus more on these things. I need to structure them in a certain way. So I'm gonna do something in April, I'm gonna do something now in March, I'm gonna do something in July, I'm gonna do something in September, and I'm gonna reverse engineer everything around that. How much money do we need?

What are the projects I'm gonna take? How much writing I want to do?

How many books do I want to write the next 2 or 3 years and which topics? And I'm reverse engineering the hell out of my life. And it's been fun.

It's been great.

And that's how writing will help you.

On a side note, by the way, it was interesting. After the workshop, we went to dinner with a few people here, and one of the guys was asking some questions, and he's asking everyone about how they do certain things, what they think about certain things. And he said, um, in his profession, this is what he's doing now. He's monetizing. He has a YouTube channel. It's going well. And then when we got back to the office, I was like, hey, can I see your YouTube channel? He was so humble about it. He was like, yeah, sure, I'll be happy to show you. He has 1.2 million followers, subs, 1.2 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. And it sounded as if he has like 500, and it was amazing to see, and his content was epic. Um, I'll find the channel, I'll put it here somewhere in the, in the comments section. So it got me thinking about creation. Now, are you creating for the sake of money, or are you creating for fun? Are you creating to get more likes, more brand awareness? You want to become someone Why are you creating content? And for me, it became a bit about compounding day after day, creating that consistency and seeing what happens.

And this is how I'm doing this now, because this is probably the 7th or 8th day straight I'm talking to the camera.

And then I said, you know what, why not, let's do it.

So going back to this guy, he's been consistent in He just didn't find the right people to talk to about monetization, and now he's, he's searching. So I think, what if you try and find the right level of building, if you understand what I'm saying? Don't just build one, one thing, you know. So it's like going to the gym and working on one muscle, you look weird, or on one, one side, right? And then your right side is big, your biceps or whatever. So what if we start thinking about where we want to get to and what are the building blocks we need to in order to get there? So small suggestion, um, for me, I monetize at the moment client consulting, working on branding stuff and other things. There is a plan which consists of the book, the franchising the idea of the book, finding the right branding agencies to work with and other stuff. But until I get there, a big part of what I wanted to do had more with writing and crafting again and being consistent about it.

Why? Because when I get there, I'll need these. And, and another part is now doing these videos. So last thing I'm gonna share with you and suggest is once a day, open a camera, put a timer for 3 minutes, talk to the camera. Um, if you post every week for a year or 2 years, your life will change. So Ali, I don't know you, but I'm taking you up on your offer. And, uh, look, I'm telling others to do the same. Guys, if you need anything, anything in terms of Storytelling when it comes to your brands, marketing, sales, customer journey, how to pitch better, whether you want to do it in sales or raising funds. Do me a favor. I want to do these more. I'm having fun here. DM me, comment, do whatever you want, but ask good questions. I'm Nils of Aas. See you on the next show. This was epic. Love you all. Take care, guys. Take care.