Podcast Transcript

[00:00:47] Sean: G’day everyone, and welcome to the ScaleUps Podcast where we help first time Founders learn the secrets of scaling so they can fulfill the potential of their businesses, make bigger decisions with greater confidence and maximise the value and impact they can create in the world. I'm your host, Sean Steel. And today I have with me a fantastic guest, Belinda Wall from a Brand Amplified. How are you today, Belinda?

[00:01:06] Belinda: Yeah, really well. Thank you, Sean. Thanks for having me.  

[00:01:09] Sean: My pleasure. Nice to see you again. And before we kick off, I just want to acknowledge, our community has been wonderful in leaving some writings and some reviews and feedback. We've had some great stuff coming through. It seems about 70% of people interestingly use Apple Podcasts as their platform and another 20 odd percent use Spotify. So, there you go. Spotify seems to be creeping up these days, but a big shout out to Mark Focathos, who said that this podcast is a great conversational style to its interviews, uncovering what it takes to scale of business. Thank you very much, Mark. We really appreciate your feedback. If you're listening to this and you'd like to have you as right out, please jump on the platforms, leave a review, our team really get a huge kick out of that. So, I thank you very much. I guest today, however, as I said, is Belinda Wall from Brand Amplified. And for those who aren't familiar with Brand Amplified or your background, maybe I can offer a bit of a summary. Belinda, and you can correct me if I get some of that wrong. So, you've been director at Brand Amplified for seven years now. And so that is particularly brand marketing, communications, content, activation, and experience marketing, but you've been in this space like 15 years, I would say, maybe plus now, would that be alright?

[00:02:17] Belinda: Yeah, that's correct. Absolutely.  

[00:02:19] Sean: And what I really love about your background. I always think, when you end up in a very consultative space, it makes a big difference what perspectives you bring. And what I notice about your background is that, not only have you had executive roles, leading brand and comms inside a company. Then you've had a, I don't know, was that sort of an in-house agency space for PWC, where you're probably servicing PWC clients, but with an internal team. And then of course your own brand, Brand Amplified. So, you bring this kind of three different perspectives to what it takes to scale, but how particularly in the focus of course of our dialogue today is what a Founders need to be paying attention to in this space, because you know, in the 2 to 20 million revenue range space, there's so much ongoing discovery happening, you're still trying to figure out, you know, what do we believe about our industry and our clients and their problems and our solutions and what our purpose is and how do we bring all of that together in a cohesive brand, brand story, positioning. And for those Founders who don't have a background in marketing that can find this very challenging to nail, you know, they might understand it intrinsically and you have a one-on-one conversation with them and I can talk about, and you're like, wow, that is so meaningful and heartfelt and compelling. But when I look at you a website and all your materials, none of that comes through. So, it's kind of, you know, it's fine when you're in that stage and all your businesses coming through referral. But the moment they go, okay, I really want to put some effort into this business. I want to scale. I'm going to have to acquire new customers. And then all of a sudden that becomes a big problem, right? Because new customers don’t have a history, there’s no referral has no credibility that's instant. And so, you've actually got to be able to communicate your space, so who you are and why you are and why they should care. So, I guess key focus for us today is to have Founders takeaway three or four really practical things that they need to think about deeply from your perspective, if they want to scale in the context of their brand and their story and their positioning and their messaging. So, let's allow those takeaways to fall off the back of some stories that you've been thinking about on what those three to four things are that Founders really need to consider. What's the first thing that you think we should start with?

[00:04:35] Belinda: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think, even from your opening, Sean, you really hit the nail on the head with a couple of things. First and foremost, is that, obviously with my background I’ve had the fortune of coming at brand from a few different framings, being in-house as a consultant from looking from the outside in, wearing the customer's shoes, et cetera, et cetera. So that's really, really important. I think the second thing that you kind of pointed out, which I'm really keen to explore today is the gap between having a great story and being clear about it in our minds as Founders, but then lacking that formality and following through on that and really capturing it in a distilled official way and then sort of bunkering down and taking that further and operationalising that and cascading that through your organisation and really being clear on how or the role that brand is going to play if your business, as you scale and grow from here. So first and foremost, I think the most important thing is to number one, get really clear on what brand actually means and avoid the first error, which is not formalising it. So, brand, I think, you know, it's bandied around a lot and I think it's one of those terms that we're expected to be very familiar with. But in fact, a lot of people actually aren't that familiar with.  

[00:06:23] Sean: Yeah, what does it actually mean.

[00:06:25] Belinda: Exactly. A lot of people either think it, they know what it means and it's a bit esoteric and they can't quite grasp it so I'll park it there for a few years and it'll kind of take care of itself. Or very commonly, they mistake it for their visual identity as a brand. And what we talk about, a lot of Founders will say, yeah, I've got a brand, I've got a logo, I've got a colour palette, I've got a font foundry that we've agreed on or a typography, I engaged a graphic designer when I first set up the business it's in this folder and it sits there and we use the logo every day. It's great. It's a brand. That's not the brand actually. Brand, I mean, your identity, your visual identity is an important part of your brand, that's one manifestation and a critical manifestation of your brand, but that is not your brand. So, when we talk about brand, yeah, there's some really key components, and it really, once we step through them, you'll understand that it really infiltrates almost every aspect of your business. So first and foremost, when we're talking about brand or…I typically say, you know, brand articulation, and that encompasses a few different areas. But first and foremost, we're talking about, what is your ‘Why’ as a brand, and a lot of people quite familiar with the “find your ‘why’”, “what is your ‘why’” Simon Sinek, really popularised that in his Ted talk.  

[00:08:31] Sean: Can you still hear me, Belinda?

[00:12:40] Belinda: No problem. So typically, I refer to a more sort of holistic approach to thinking about brand from a brand articulation perspective. And the core component of our brand starts with our ‘Why’, and Simon Sinek really popularised this term through his Ted talk, starting with ‘Why’ and that really speaks to making sure that we're clear on what is the reason that we exist.

So, beyond the products that we're selling or the service that we're selling, what do you stand for? What's the point of what you do? And if we think about it from more of a Maslow's hierarchy of needs perspective, beyond functional features and benefits for your customer, what are you enabling or what are you seeking to change? Or what feelings or associations or higher order need are we tapping into? So, a lot of brands, for example, think about taking a, you know, we help do through model in terms of articulating their mission statement or their 'Why’. So, for example, if we think about Nike, one of the most successful brands, all people would say, oh, isn't their 'Why’ or their mission statement is "Just do it”. It’s like, no, that's actually a strap line. Their mission statement is or their Why is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. So, they believe that if you have a body, you're an athlete. So that actually speaks to their ‘Why’. Similarly, if you look at a big brand or a successful brand like Atlassian, their mission statement or their 'Why’ is from medicine to space travel to disaster response to the pizza deliveries, our products help teams all over the planet advance humanity through the power of software. So, you can see how that model of we help do through. Our mission is to help unleash the potential of every team. So, it's a less of a focus on what you're selling or what you're delivering to market. It's more about why you exist. So that is the crux and that is the bedrock of your brand.

[00:14:58] Sean: I think one of the, just to jump in there, Belinda, one of the things that jumped out at me and that I certainly have felt come through when I've read Simon Sinek’s, he's his stuff around Why, is sometimes it's easiest to start with the belief. And you talked about the belief there from Nike, you know, we believe that everyone who's got a body is an athlete, or can be an athlete. And that's actually the starting point. When I talk about this with my clients, that's where I really tried to start. Because they can usually grapple or ramble as something like ‘why, I don't really know why we exist, what the purpose is’, but when you go, ‘what do you believe about the industry or your customers, or the problems with the customer or the problems with the industry?’ Like, what is it that you believe about that?  

[00:15:37] Belinda: Yep.  

[00:15:38] Sean: And then like, well, you know, we believe that customers deserve this or that, this thing in the industry sucks or that the way people do this is terrible. And that that's something that we really want to see change. Like, that's something that, like someone that can talk about that and then you…  

[00:15:50] Belinda: Change and problems. Yeah, absolutely. Seth Godin essentially says that; “if you're not seeking to change something, then what is the point?” You know, whether that be a behaviour or a perception or a buying pattern or the way we exist in the world, fundamentally as a brand, you should be existing to change something. And whether that is to fix a problem or to help someone feel better or feel a different way by buying into your product or to progress in a certain area. Yeah, absolutely. I think if people want to go deeper on brand Simon Sinek and Seth Godin, are great people to read up on and think about. In addition to the ‘Why’ and the mission statement that the other core elements of brand, or of course positioning and differentiation. So, being really clear on how we're going to compete with others in the market, why a customer is going to choose us, what is our proposition? So, this is a big one, beyond what you're selling to make money, why should people choose your brand or want to choose your brand or your competitors? So, for example, again, to look at some big brands and how they've gone to market in terms of their positioning and their value proposition. If we look at some, like Qantas, for example, they've always  focused on safety, number one, you know, absolutely number one. And secondly, the spirit of Australia, that's really key to their positioning and their values as a brand. And that's what they put first and foremost beyond anything else. Brands like Bunnings, for example, community has always been huge price and depth in the offering is huge as well. The Iconix, so as a retailer selling products, but their actual positioning and their value prop is actually more about service proposition. So, there are lots of like, online merchants retailing clothing out there, but none of them have the service proposition and none of them went to market that early with an exceptional service proposition as quickly as they did. So, there's some examples of brands who were very clear at the outset on how are we going to compete, and what's going to be our, I guess, our competitive advantage. So yeah, I think that the ‘Why’ in parallel with your differentiation and your positioning is absolutely key. And then when we’re digging…

[00:18:52] Sean: Sorry, just to add some thought to that and some colour. When I think about. Sometimes I work with clients who are really struggling to think about how they differentiate. They're in a pretty crowded market. Lots of people are doing relatively similar things in their product or service area and really going well. Yeah. One of the problems of course, is going, looking at the market and saying, okay, well, this is what everybody else is doing. What am I going to do differently? It's a bit inside out, you kind of… because your benchmark is stuff that already exists, what everybody else is doing today. And so, whilst that's helpful, sometimes I get my clients to think about what are the…let's get a list of all the things that your customers hate about people and this industry, like, think about what they think about your industry. Like, I hate the commercial model. It doesn't align with what I really want. And for example, I was chatting with a client, who's an executive recruiter and we were like, well, having been a CEO and recruited lots of executive leaders, one of the things I always hated was that executive recruitment is quite expensive, but your incentive is not aligned with mine. So what do I see as success? Well, I want somebody to stick around for three to five years and produce, but your commercial model is right up front. It's all paid. It's basically no risk to you. If the person doesn't succeed for six months, okay maybe you're replacing them, but that's not really stacking the deck in may getting my outcome, which is three to five years of success. What could you be doing differently as a recruiter to improve all of the elements of service that help that person, even after they've started, maybe over the course of five years to change how you align your commercial model. I'm happy to pay you than the average recruiter over that period of time, if you can prove to me that actually you can stack the deck in my favour. So, I think, sometimes working from those real, pain points, or just in the simplest words for a small business, the stuff that customers hate about your competitors and your model and your industry and how everybody operates. Start there. Look, the ways you can solve that in a more compelling way and it sometimes makes it much easier than thinking I've got to have some amazing market analysis and I've got to figure out what absolutely everybody's doing because it's changing all the time. It's like, well, focus on the customer and how you can solve that problem differently and uniquely and start there.  

[00:21:07] Belinda: Yeah, that razor sharp understanding of the customer is really, really critical and not just in demographics, but more so psychographics, which is what you were saying, you know, what are those friction points? What are their challenges? What are others not listening to and ignoring because they're either too hard to solve for, or they're too expensive or people just haven't innovated to really respond to it. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. I think that takes a little bit of some of the, I guess the esoteric-ness away from brand as well, because it makes it so much more tangible and valuable for Founders when they're thinking about brands. Well, it's not just about us and a lofty promise to market. This is actually about helping customers in a meaningful way that is really relevant to their existence and their challenge points. So… and I think, you know, you don't always have to be an absolute or a true innovator in a category to have cut through in the market. It can be as simple as say, for example, I think one of the most impressive brands that's come onto the market over the last 5 to 10 years is go to skincare, driven by Zoe Foster Blake. And she's an author and a writer, number one. But she sort of had the audacity to jump into a category as competitive as cosmetics, and to really take it to the competition including the likes of the behemoths, like Loreal, and she knew that; okay, well, I'm never going to have as many products and I'm never going to have maybe the price point, but maybe I can actually do this a little bit differently. Maybe I can inject some of my strengths, which is personality, copywriting fun, quirk, wit, show a really sharp understanding of my customer, which is speaking exactly to her sweet spot, which was Gen-Z’s women who are prepared to call bullshit on anything and just want some fun, great product and they want to feel good about their purchase and so forth. So, they feel heard. And they've done phenomenally well in terms of scaling and getting equity investment and breaking into offshore markets. So again, another great example and you don't have to be changing the world with a new product necessarily, can be assigned product and who gives a crap? Did exactly the same thing with toilet paper. I mean, another toilet paper brand? No, but and I'll never forget a couple of years ago I had some friends over from England and we go to our delivery of who gives a crap on the front doorstep and they were just blown away by how creative, obviously, the humour was very Australian. So, for UK potential customer, that was just, perhaps a little alarming, but they absolutely loved it.

[00:24:20] Sean: That's what gets cut-through.  

[00:24:21] Belinda: So clever. Absolutely. Stops you in your tracks. And then also, oh wow. And the extra there is, it's actually sustainable, you know, but people could also buy it because; Hey, it's fun design and they're really funny and it makes me feel good to spend my money with these people, plus they deliver it to my doorstep. So, I hate carting toilet rolls again. What does your customer hate? I hate going to the supermarket and buying paper towel and toilet paper because it takes up half my boat, you know? So put it on people's doorsteps.

[00:24:58] Sean: And it's like, if you can't figure out what your customer's pain points are, then you just not having the conversation with them, like assuming that you've got some customers already, and we're not in kind of pre-seed market research stage. And most of the people in this community are 2 mil to 20 mil, they've got a business, they've got customers. They've got people they can speak to. The question is, well, how often are you actually just having a conversation with your customers about their perspectives on your industry, their perspectives on your competitors, the problems they're trying to solve using your product or service, what happens before that? What happens after that? How it impacts them personally? How it makes them feel? Until you have those conversations, it's really difficult to do anything, but look at the market and see if you can find a bit of white space and to be creative. It's like the customer is the one that you have to pay you, so get involved in the conversations.  

[00:25:51] Belinda: Yeah, I think that's a really great point. And again, it's about doing the work, isn't it? It's about saying, “okay, well, we might not have the funds or the time to fork out for a big customer research investment, but hey, we've actually got a database of 5,000 of our own customers. So, let's reach out to them” and actually ask how we're doing or what's happening in your life and what really annoys you right now and et cetera, et cetera. And then yes, you've got a whole library of really powerful insights, but you can remarket those things in some really clever and creative ways by saying, you know, Hey, we listened to, or we asked women aged 40 to 50 what really bugs them about buying cosmetics from the supermarket, and we responded in this way. So yeah, I think, you know, there's lots of value there to doing…  

[00:26:50] Sean: I think you make the strategic exercise a week long thing, like carve out a week, do nothing else, but have them all lined up, you know, pack them all together in a week and have the same conversation like you'll tweak and iterate the conversation and the questions. And so, I don't have the same conversation over and over with the many customers you can so that at the end of that, you're like, wow, that was a massive, you'll see the patterns very quickly, you'll see where things are the same, you'll see where they are different. And one thing I would say to Founders listening is, the other reason you do this and you don't spend all of your time worrying about the competitors is you can't compete on everything. So, the worst thing you can do is try to match all your competitors for features of their product or service to get to a hundred percent of what they have, plus they now perform on a couple, you actually have to say no to things. Otherwise, you're going to go broke. You can't compete on all those things. And actually, the strongest brands go; okay, there's seven typical features of this product or service, and we're actually going to choose not to compete at all on three or four of them, but we are going to create some nuance or really double down on a couple, because in the absence of doing that, and the absence of the ability to channel your money and effort and resources towards some things that you think customers really care about and will make a real difference to their lives and their experience of your product or service, you don't ever get enough traction, skill, expertise, depth for it to really become a competitive advantage because you just cannot compete on all of them. Especially if you're comparing yourself to bigger players who've got deeper pockets. You've got to go narrower, deeper and develop something that becomes a competitive advantage.  

[00:28:34] Belinda: Yup. There's a saying, it's a great brand saying, "The sharper your focus, the broader the appeal”, and it takes a lot of discipline. And this is actually my second point around branding, which is, are you all set to honour that brand and treat it as your single source of truth because you know, the rubber hits the road when you may have had this great brand articulation session and you've formalised it and so forth. But unless you were prepared to make sure that you've got proper alignment across all key stakeholders in the organisation. And that really should have happened in the stages when you were bringing it together, but unless you have socialised that brand work, but also you're prepared to agree all key stakeholders that you're going to call each other out if you are now offering. So, has everyone been familiarised on the purpose and value of the brand and the role that it's going to play now, I think is a really key one. Are we prepared to call each other out when we're off track? So is to use that as a north star to say, we're going to say no on this, we're going to say no on that opportunity or someone from product developments come up with this great idea and we're entrepreneurs. So, we get excited about anything that looks like a potential opportunity, but that doesn't actually sit with our brand, you know, that doesn't make sense for a customer that we have told that we exist to, I don't know, multiply your human performance to use a two times you example, from a sports brand I used to work with, but you know, if we're going to go to market now and produce a product that is perhaps speaking more closely to a yummy mummy customer, it starts to get very diluted and confused. And so, I think the important second part there is make sure that you are all prepared to start honouring that brand work, and it's really going to serve as your guiding light or your north star. And that can be hard sometimes.

[00:30:59] Sean: So just to summarise where we're at. So, if we think point one is you got to get clear on your Why and what you believe and why you exist and so on. Second, we’re thinking about positioning, particularly in the context of differentiation, like, you know, why should they, okay let's assume they've bought in. That sounds like an interesting vision. We've got a new customer on the end of the line. Second is; well, how are we different to anybody else? So that whole differentiation piece and what makes us unique and how we're solving that problem differently. Third is, okay, now that we've understood that, what does it mean for our organisation in terms of what's in or what's out? How does it impact our decisions? How does it impact what we're going to invest money in, what we're going to say no to, and you know, the ability to take the opportunity to workshop that with your team, to make sure that actually you've road tested a whole bunch of those things, because as you said, they're going to come up on a constant basis and you've got to have some parameters that allow you to go; those things are in, those things are out, you know, those kinds of things. What comes… conscious of how much time we've got left, Belinda, what comes next for you? So, let's assume now we've got clear ‘Why’, we've got clear positioning and differentiation. We've now got alignment inside the organisation. We know what sort of on and off brand. What's next?  

[00:32:06] Belinda: So, I guess further to that, or to build on that third point is how are we going to prove our brand true. And so, that's all about saying, okay, what are you going to be out of repeated acts or our proof points to go “okay, there is clear alignment and consistency between what we're saying and what we're actually doing. So, it's about operationalising the brand.  

[00:32:32] Sean: What’s an example of that, that people would be able to get their heads around?

[00:32:35] Belinda: Yeah. So, for example, yes, a lot of people, again, a little bit of a misnomer is to say brand is great, understand it, it's going by marketing communications. So that's where it's going to leave, and that's who's responsible for it and everyone else can kind of carry on. But it doesn't actually, it extends far beyond that. So, it's about things like, okay, have we fed brand into our induction or third-party engagement familiarisation processes? Have we built it in as a critical steer for things like product development and diversification, our culture and culture is becoming increasingly, increasingly important. I'll give some examples of that. Things like recruitment and retention policies, our code of contact, our ESG statements, our customer policy, or terms of trade, how is it going to guide M&A's or business or other broader opportunities that come to us in terms of, or along our journey to grow. So, if we go back to the Atlassian example about “the Why”, and how might they start to use that to pressure test, you know, they might say; okay, well, does this, or will this, or could this, it might be a new product or a service or sponsorship or a hire or an acquisition, does this actually help teams all over the planet to advance humanity or help to unleash the potential of every team? So, it doesn't actually speak back to our brand and our mission. So, for example, LinkedIn's mission statement is to make the world's professionals more productive and successful. So is this software update or is this additional feature going to actually help users be more productive or successful, or is it kind of just another gadget and nice to have, or just something that John came up with…  

[00:34:40] Sean: Yeah, exactly. It could be something that starts to, as an example of what might be out. Okay. Well give him that sort of brand direction, something that starts to turn a bit more into a Facebook or an Instagram where people are sort of scrolling mindlessly, as opposed to it, making them more productive or more efficient or more successful. It's like might be nice. But all of a sudden it actually doesn't really matter because it's not going to deliver on that.  

[00:35:03] Belinda: That's it. And another great example I think is of a fail in this area is the old Blockbuster-Netflix fail. So, blockbuster had the opportunity a couple of eons ago, it feels like eons to acquire a little company called Netflix. And they decided, no, they wouldn't do that because they were actually in the business of selling DVDs. What they didn't realise is they were in the business of selling into time and experiences into the family home. So, they actually mistook what they did or the products that they sold for why they exist. So, if, again, it's to go back to that, “the sharper your focus, the broader appeal,” even though sometimes brand or a mission statement might feel like, oh, isn't this a bit sort of either lofty or really, really niche. Like, is this too niche? Is this too focused? It actually helps to open your mind to opportunities that you might not see are actually feeding into your mission or why you exist. So, you know, the Netflix-Blockbuster example is a really good one. And I think, your ‘what’ as I said, or your strategy or your go to market approach, they will all change over time, but your ‘why’ we should essentially remain constant. And I mentioned before, how does brand, what sort of role does brand play in something like culture? And there's been some examples of big fails on that path. So for example, Away Luggage. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Away Luggage Sean, but there are very, very popular luggage label based out of the States and they scaled very, very quickly. They sold a vision of traveling inclusion, but former employees came out, and it went viral, which is always going to be the case now, you know, especially if you retail in particular employees, a lot of Gen-Zs, they live on social media. We live in a culture where cancel culture exists, and transparency is the absolutely expectation, it's not the exception. So, former employees came out and said that it actually masked a toxic work environment. It went viral across the internet, and the cutthroat culture essentially allowed the company to grow at hyper speed and develop a cult following with celebrities and millennials, but also opened a yawning gap between how Away appeared to its customers and what actually looked like on the inside. You know, Amazon got called out for that, or has been called out for that several times as well. And that can have really damaging effects to your brand. If you're a listed business, it can affect your share prices, your customers, especially young customers, they'll move, you know, drop of a hat. All it takes is to read one article and they're like, I'm never touching that brand again. I'm off, I'm following you, I’m not buying a product, onto the next thing. So, I think some really powerful examples of it done well and done poorly, is that brand goes way beyond marketing econs. It should feed into culture. I think if you're developing brand values these days, they should be what is termed or, often what we would call values with teeth, which means they must be true for you internally and externally. So, that means that they should be relevant and engaging and reflective of your employees, but also relevant and appealing to your customers and prospects too because they...

[00:39:26] Sean: They have two different sets. You know, a set for your team and a set for customers, that doesn't work.  

[00:39:30] Belinda: No, absolutely. You know, they should be ones you proudly put on the wall.

[00:39:34] Sean: Yeah, I'm conscious of how much time we've got left. And I really want to make sure we get all of your key points out. Is there a fourth one that you were thinking about…

[00:39:44] Belinda: There is.

[00:39:44] Sean: And something that you really want Founders to focus on?  

[00:39:47] Belinda: Absolutely, I think my final one is one specifically for Founders themselves, which is; how will your story or your narrative or your personal brand fit into your broader marketing mix, if at all? So, parallel brands are becoming more and more important and more and more commonplace, it’s an exceptional opportunity to drive a Founder message. But of course, it must be complimentary and managed in parallel with the master brand or the organisation in which you are driving or spearheading. So, you know, I do a lot of work with executives and Founders around personal brand strategies. And making sure that, and it takes work, Sean, you know, not every Founder wants to step into the spotlight. A lot of them prefer, especially in the formative years to say; okay, look, I've got work to do, I want to get some runs on the board. I really need to prove this model and to show traction before I step up and start telling my own story. And you know, it's about the brand and the product. It's not really about me. And I was doing an interview series on behalf of a client the other day. And I interviewed a Founder of a fantastic Meditech business that's scaling really well. And the Founder said “throughout my career, I'd need to invest in my communication and public speaking skills, especially to share the results of my research at conferences.” So, her background was in research and medical research, whereas at Medi studies. So, this is her new start-up, this has taken on a completely new dimension…

[00:41:30] Sean: So, you can take it from there whenever you're ready, Belinda.  

[00:41:37] Belinda: Yeah, I think, you know, further to the final point around how Founders, what role they're going to actually play and what their personal brand, the role their personal brand is going to play in their growth story is, this idea around parallel brands, is they becoming more and more commonplace, but more and more powerful. And that's in parallel with, again, this era of transparency that we're living in, consumers and customers want to know what they're buying into, who is behind the brand, why they set up the brand and the story and why they exist. So again, I guess it just serves to illustrate that this whole idea of brand and the ‘Why’ is not an esoteric one. Sean, it's very much being valued more and more by customers as well. There's a kind of a forensic level of detail there. So, I worked with Founders and entrepreneurs quite regularly around personal brand strategies and what role their brands are going to play in their growth story and how they can serve to add for the equity to their brand as well. And it opens up a whole raft of additional opportunities. I was working or interviewing a Founder the other day from a fantastic, Meditech company that's scaling really quickly. And she came from a background originally in medical research. And she made a remark about the fact that, throughout her career she's needed to invest in communication and public speaking as part of her medical research, because you had to go to a lot of, you know, obviously conferences and present papers and so forth, but at her new start-up, medi states, this is taken on an even greater dimension because rather than talking about the actual work that she's doing as a Founder she has asked more and more to share about herself as a person, as opposed to actually share about your products or what you're selling or the reason that exists. So, it's really interesting if we look at some of the most successful and prominent brands in the world right now, the likes of your Teslas or Virgin or Boost Juice, or go to skincare, which we're very, very familiar with the Founders. We know Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Janine Ellis is everywhere, Zoe Foster Blake, there is countless examples, you know, Atlassian. And we know about Mike Cannon Brookes and Scott Farquhar, et cetera. You know, this week he's making a bid to transform the energy sector, which is fantastic. And again, you can see that that equity has been immediately transferable for him into other areas because he just flew under the radar with Atlassian. He wouldn't have been able to draw on his personal brand, really, to muscle in and to sort of take that opportunity in the way that he's down now. And if we compare the year that we living in now, which is all about transparency. If we think back to some of the bygone brands or the bygone era, you know, like Kleenex, do you know who founded Kleenex, Sean? Or Coca-Cola Amatil or, you know, going back to the good old days of Anset, I couldn't tell you who the Founder of Anset was, but we're all very familiar with Ellen Joyce now, aren't we? He was in our worlds and giving us updates is as frequently as Scott Morrison over the pandemic, and similarly, we were getting emails weekly from Steven Kane, the Cole CEO about what we can expect from their service proposition and the supply of products and so forth. So, it wasn't just coming from head of marketing or comms. It was coming directly from the CEO and so forth. So, I think the takeaway there for Founders is that we're living in an era where people want to connect with people and people trust brands that they can see a human behind and they want to know a human, you know, they want to be able to access and consume a human story as well. So, you've got to think about how, especially for businesses and companies that by nature, perhaps have a less human element to them. We're a B2B, it's really quite a relevant for us, or… I think you've got to really think about the opportunity and how could this become an opportunity for us? If I was going to speak at certain conferences or events or think about getting some PR about the growth trajectory that we're on, or, you know, how is this going to help us land some more suppliers or what have you… or engage and connect with our customers more deeply, there's some incredible value there. But again, it has to be done with consideration and done strategically because it absolutely… your values and your kind of go-to market as a Founder has to align and compliment that of your master brand.  

[00:47:35] Sean: And I think that, there's plenty of examples of where that hasn't done anyone any favours where the Founder's life is unravelling and pretty unhealthy and all of a sudden that's flowing through to the corporate brand, you know, things like crown and that I'm sure there's many examples where we see a Founder and …

[00:47:56] Belinda: Oh, there are risks. Absolutely.  

[00:47:59] Sean: Lots of risks, but I think it sort of loops back nicely to your first point which was around ‘why’. And quite often that, particularly in the earliest stages, quite often a strong link between the Founder and their background in this story and how they uncovered a problem or something disruptive that they wanted to work on or solve in an industry. And then what the purpose of the brand ends up becoming, and lots of Founders of course go. Yeah, but I also want to be able to sell at some point or exit at some points. I don't want to be so tightly linked that the business is me. But to your point, it's about finding a way for the, if there's going to be a found a brand that sort of sits along beside that, that they're complimentary. But the business has its own heart and reason for being that is not the Founder, but it can, and certainly, it's not unreasonable for it to have come from there or the genesis for it to have come from there.  

[00:48:55] Belinda: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:48:57] Sean: Belinda. I'm really grateful of your time today. You know, brand and positioning and story and messaging is so important in these businesses and it can be a very daunting area. If you were going to just summarise, I know we've covered a fair bit of ground, but could you just re summarise for us what those four key points, the four things that you really want Founders to think about practically as they take away from today's instructive a tutorial on brand and positioning, what are those four things?  

[00:49:27] Belinda: Yeah. Okay. So, number one, get really clear on what brand means, and avoid error by formalising yours. The second one is, ensuring. Well, the question is, is your team and organisation mobilised and ready to start honouring your brand and treating it as your single source of truth.  

[00:49:51] Sean: Yup.  

[00:49:52] Belinda: So really being honest about that, and making sure that you're all good to go there. The third one is how will we prove our brand true. So, we talked about things like campaigning it, but also operationalising it across things like product development, culture, reviewing M&A opportunities, product diversification, et cetera, et cetera. Is it being lived? Is there alignment between what we are saying and what we are doing at every level across the organization? And then finally for Founders, how will your story or your narrative personal brand fit into your broader marketing mix, if at all? So, being really clear about, okay, what opportunities come with that if we're going to venture down that path, when will that be? And you know, if my goal is to exit at some point, you probably have to think about that too. So, you're right, Sean, you pointed out that it also comes with certain risks, but they can be managed and managed well. But I think we're operating in a day and age where the opportunities and the benefits far outweigh those risks right now. So, you just don't want to close yourself off from those. So, it's something to think about.

[00:51:16] Sean: Wonderful. Well, I really appreciate your time today. I think those are some fantastic takeaways for our Founders. It's never an easy task. It's not something usually that you solve overnight, but it matters. It really matters. It matters particularly in a crowded marketplace where you've got lots of competitors. If you're not the first person to have advantage on kind of widget and you're going up against many, many other people. Brand and story and positioning, they matter so much because that's, especially, again, if you're moving out of a model where perhaps all the businesses come to you through personal reputation and reputation of your team and so on, and you're going, actually, we need to grow and accelerate, we're going to inject capital, we’re going to build us as a marketing strength, we're going to acquire new customers as a really big focus so that we can expand our impact. Well, this stuff is absolutely core and central. Don't spend lots of money hiring salespeople and hiring marketing activators until you've actually done this work. This would be my suggestion because you're going to blow a lot of money if you're not getting cut-through. So, take the time, put the focus in. Thank you so much, Belinda. How can people get in touch with you or sort of follow along with what you are doing?  

[00:52:24] Belinda: Yeah, it looks the best way to reach me probably on LinkedIn actually. So hit me up Belinda Wall, Brand Amplified. You'll find me, don't be afraid to connect, love to do so. So, look forward to hearing from your community, Sean.

[00:52:43] Sean: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Belinda. Folks, I really hope you've enjoyed the show today. Big thanks to Belinda Wall from Brand Amplified and a couple of things before you go, if you found that valuable today, of course, please feel free to leave us a feedback, or if you think there's something that we could, if there's another sort of, part of this topic or segment you'd like to hear more about, please let us know. You can send us an email at [email protected] or just jump on the website. If you want to drop your email there, we'll let you know when new episodes are about to drop. And of course, we always value reviews on Apple Podcasts, ideally. Or you can find us on the socials at ScaleUps Podcast on any of your favourite socials. And just remember, as a parting thought for you today. The only thing that's going to guarantee that you won't scale, even if you're finding your way through a brand and you're finding it difficult and tricky, you just can't give up, you have to stay unshakable in your faith that you're going to get there, you have to remain flexible in your approach and you just got to keep working on it, so don’t give up. You've been listening to ScaleUps Podcast. I am Sean Steele, and I look forward to speaking with you again next week. Thank you so much, Belinda.  

[00:53:40] Belinda: Ciao.