The 3 Branding Mistakes That Stop Product Growth | Jim Macleod

Find out how a Fractional CMO can get the right questions answered from the right audience. https://meshagency.com/fcmo-fractional-cmo-fractional-marketing/
- Connect with Bill https://www.linkedin.com/in/founderandcdo/

Jim MacLeod Designer-turned-marketer, brand systems builder, and author of The Visual Marketer—a field guide that translates design fundamentals for marketers and founders.
- Connect with Jim MacLeod: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmacleod/
- Jim’s Book: https://book.jimmacleod.com/

Struggling to make great tech look inevitable? Bring in MESH as your fractional CMO to turn brand, web, and product storytelling into qualified pipeline.

Designer-turned-full-stack marketer Jim MacLeod breaks down why “good enough” visuals stall growth, how he led a 90-day rebrand without losing brand equity, and the small design choices that decide whether your product gets tried…or ignored.

00:00 Intro — brand fragmentation & growth roadblocks
01:12 Meet Jim Macleod — design, marketing & brand systems
04:17 Case study — 90-day rebrand under Apple-style deadlines
08:27 Why keep the purple? Modernizing without losing equity
12:25 Outdated design vs. innovative tech — fixing the disconnect
16:08 Sales decks & storytelling — shaping the brand narrative
18:10 Customer support as brand — protecting what matters in acquisitions
20:32 Bridging design & marketing — lessons from The Visual Marketer
25:00 Three essentials founders can’t DIY: logo, colors, consistency
31:00 Why first impressions matter — design as trust and credibility
35:09 Trade shows & booth design — why presentation drives traffic
39:10 When to invest in brand — moving beyond referrals
42:12 Copy vs. design — which comes first, and why both matter
45:57 Final thoughts, book link & wrap-up

Founders swear “the tech sells itself.” Buyers don’t. In this episode, Jim MacLeod shows how small visual decisions snowball into trust, attention, and adoption. He walks us through a compressed 90-day rebrand, explaining why his team kept the legacy color (because the market already mapped it to credibility) while modernizing everything around it. 

Brand Swagger: Jim’s 3 No-BS Design Wins

- 1) Codify your visual system—once.
 Stop “designing from scratch” every asset. Build a one-page brand kit that nails your type hierarchy, color roles, spacing grid, icon style, motion rules, and image treatment (e.g., duotone, depth, lighting). Turn those into tokens in your CMS/Slide master so the choices are baked in. Result: faster production, fewer off-brand detours, and a look that’s unmistakably you across web, decks, UI, and booths.

- 2) Color with intent, not taste.
 Pick an ownable anchor color (distinct in your category), pair it with two neutrals for clinical credibility, and reserve one accent for calls-to-action and data highlights. Pressure test it in the wild: accessibility contrast, print vs. screen, scrubs/OR lighting, tradeshow LEDs, and dark mode. If it fails anywhere your buyers live, it’s not your color system—it’s a liability.

- 3) Design the first impression you can’t afford to miss.
 Prioritize the touchpoints that actually sell: homepage hero, product shell/packaging, sales deck front half, and 10×10 tradeshow booth. Make them story-led (problem → outcome → proof), ruthless on clarity (one idea per screen), and visually scannable at six feet. Then measure like a grown-up: booth dwell time, deck completion rate, hero click-through, and demo requests tied to those assets. If it doesn’t move pipeline, it’s just decoration.

For more specialized help with growth, check out my firm, Mesh.
https://meshagency.com/ 

#DesignThatSells #MedTechMarketing #FractionalCMO

Transcript

0:00

People make super quick judgments even in health care and devices and life sciences. If you're visuals, the first thing you that the person sees sends the message that this isn't cutting edge, they're not going to stick around. Welcome to life side continuum. I'm Bill Schick, your fractional chief marketing officer. Today we're digging into three big ideas that quietly cap your growth how brand fragmentation creates confusion and floats deals. While your website and visual system must sell, not just look nice. And the playbook for connecting strategy to execution across product, marketing and executive teams. First and foremost is the brand identity, the logo. That's something that you don't want to just use Canva or some AI tool to make your company logo. You can't own it. There's no guarantee that what Canva spits out for you is not going to spit it out for the company down the street. See, too many teams treat design as veneer. The truth mismatch signals modern tech wrapped in data presentation can create instant distrust and longer sales cycles. So today we look at how do you turn brand and design from an afterthought into a growth system that shortens time to trust. So if you see a banner ad on the side of your web page and you see that the red background and the golden arches, you don't have to stop and think, what is this company? What are they trying to sell me? To unpack this, I invited Jim McLeod, founder of Embrace Companies called Jim. When their brand is fragmented. Their website isn't pulling its weight of your needs leadership to align brand, digital experience and content strategy. He's led complex rebrands, localization programs and large scale design system roll outs that get cross-functional teams moving in the same direction fast. What's more important? Copier design. The thing I always say is good design can save bad copy, but bad design will murder great copies by the end of this conversation. You'll walk away with a toolkit for diagnosing fragmentation and deciding what to keep versus what to change without breaking hard won equity. Turn your website into a pipeline engine and orchestrate a 90 day alignment sprint that connects strategy to execution across teams. All right. Let's get to it. So, Jim, thanks for hopping on with me today. Thanks for having me. Give us, you know, for the audience, a little bit of background on you, you know, your experience, some of the things that that you've done and what you're doing today. Yeah. So I did start as a graphic designer, and I found myself, you know, early on I saw the kind of the web starting up and seeing that that was going to become a thing. So I wanted to get more on that side of, of the business. And that led me over to kind of the marketing side of, of companies. And I worked with some great marketers across some, some really good companies, people that really knew what they were talking about. So one of the things I wanted to do was, you know, learn from them and kind of expand it because, you know, at first I was like, oh, I can be a better designer if I know what the audience is looking for. What we're trying to do, you know, because when, when you first start out is just as a designer, it's all about just make it look cool, right? Grab attention. But then I start to learn, know there's a whole lot more to this. So I started getting deeper into kind of the the marketing and messaging side of things, and that brought me into content, and that brought me into social and branding and kind of the larger picture across all of marketing. That's more than just how it looks. And I like that a lot, because for my audience, you know, whether it's an entrepreneur, someone in marketing or even, you know, really anybody involved in product development and commercialization, what I see a lot of is, you know, the design side of things is, is almost an afterthought. It doesn't matter that much. Let's play very conservatively and really design often with a device or a software or on the marketing, the brand side of things. It's not. It's perceived as maybe less important than it actually is. You know, I'm sure you've seen this, but some of these what seem like minor decisions can have really bigger impacts on the success of a device. And and people often don't believe that. They think, well, I've solved a problem over here. People are simply going to buy it. And the design is is really an afterthought. And so today we're going to talk a little bit about that, and some of the things that you've seen and really anything else you want to share with us. Great. You've been doing this. We've collectively been doing this for a while. Tell me, tell me a little bit about, some recent experiences you had. You and I were talking before. And you, you just went through a 90 day rebrand project. Maybe set that up for us and tell us a little bit about the situation. Maybe some of the things that you saw, that were challenges and then how you'd solve them. Yeah. So this was a few years back. I was working for a company that got acquired by, competitor that was actually a little smaller. And we were once, once they figure out who was going to lead marketing for this company. It was my old CMO was now going to be the CMO of this newer, larger company. We were given 90 days to rebrand the company because our CEO used to be the chief marketing officer of a little company called Apple. So he was used to kind of working under just get it done deadlines, you know. So we close the deal, and then we had 90 days to completely refresh the brand messaging all of it. And by brand I mean visual brand. The name of the company stayed. So those were the two edicts that the company name is staying and the color is staying. And then it was, okay, go. We need something new. 90 days completely erase all all traces of the previous two companies. Before that. So it was a sprint working with branding agency, digital agency, video agency, working with all these different groups, messaging, branding, also because we needed to completely revamp everything in a really short amount of time. We had a contest to help, customers or prospects help pick which logo we were going to go with. And we had a brand new partnership that we announced on the the like the launch day, the day one. So we announced not only did we unveil the new website, a new brand, a tier one product launch, we also announced a partnership with the NFL. And our product had been used at the Super Bowl that year. So we had an infographic with all the data that we pulled out of the Wi-Fi analytics, at that Super Bowl. So, oh. And then we did a live stream with analysts from our from our headquarters that day. Also. So it was an insane amount of work just trying to get everything going. And, and a lot of my job was just to make sure that all the work got done. So I was identifying everything and then putting in the processes to make sure that everything was rebranded in time for the launch. That's a crazy story. So, having having been through similar things, I understand the amount of work, and sweat that goes into something like that. And maybe we'll unpack that in a moment. Do you have any thoughts or insights or opinions on the thinking behind keeping the components of the brand that you did, and also what drove the specific changes they were looking for in the brand? So part of it was we had complementary product lines, and we also knew that the top management, I instantly identified, okay, this is better than this. So we should really focus on this area. And this isn't as strong like it might do well sales wise. Now, but the long term growth of a particular product line wasn't looking great. So which is kind of one of the things that drove the acquisition and then later acquisitions to. So it was kind of identifying what, what the market was going to be wanting in the future, figuring out where we needed to double down and really focus on those type of things and de-emphasize some of the other product lines or solutions that weren't going to be as prominent and important to the company in the future. Okay. And so when it came to, as far as the, you know, the naming and the logo and, and the colors, was there was there any articulation as to why we wanted to keep the colors? But change the presentation, sort of that at that level of this project? Yeah. And and it was interesting because I put together a presentation about why we should change the color and, and that ended up, scoring me points with some folks because they saw, like, I wasn't just saying, oh, I don't like this color. I had a whole series of slides that showed the kind of history of brands that had used this color because the color was purple, which is not a very popular color, especially at the time. And so I said, hey, you know, like a lot of these companies or brands that started up in the 90s, which is when this company started use a lot of purple, it was very purple and green. And, you know, kind of that almost vanilla ice type of visual branding. And so I said, hey, a lot of, you know, the Diamondbacks and the Toronto Raptors and just some different, you know, sports teams that were heavily into purple in the 90s had transitioned mostly to reds. So that was kind of my pitch at the time. But one of the things that was pointed out was we're just known for being purple. And one of the ideas was, if you look in, you know, our products were being used along with a lot of our competitors products. Also like in their their overall, you know, customers product suite. And so what we wanted to kind of teach them was when you see purple, you know, that's not the problem. Purple equals quality, which is why the color was chosen originally. So let's stick with the purple. Let's go more bold with the purple. And that's that kind of dusty purple that we had. And and the idea was to really kind of focus on purple and own that color, because it is an actual honorable color in that space is when, you know, I remember going to conferences, you know, industry conferences, and I'd look at all the different boots and it was always 60 or 70% blue, 25% red, and then the last 5 to 10% was orange, green and purple, maybe yellow in there too. So it's not a color that's used a whole lot. So we could actually have ownership over that color, as opposed to some of the other players that just stuck with the more traditional colors. Okay, that that's great because I think I think you went through the exercise of looking at making a big change and and analyzing it. And I think it sounds like one of the takeaways was, you know, if you if you scan briefly, and you saw that color, it, it conveys the message you are associated with that, that attribute. It sounds like a level of trust. You know, being known in the industry. And while, at one level, it was dated and maybe it was the implementation, of that purple was was dated and attached to some history. It also carried a lot of weight and credibility with it. And so there was a there was a discussion there. And I think that discussion is important because these things really do matter when it comes to building a brand, across the board. Any thoughts on that? It yeah, it it was, it was mostly about the execution of it. So it was like you said, the identity of like okay, purple equals quality. But what if we made it more of a modern purple and we don't look like we're still stuck in the 90s because the logo even had, like, that kind of pattern gradient fade that was popular back then. And it was there were a lot of things that were just kind of stuck in the old days. And so it was our job to to modernize that. And then I started hearing really great feedback from it. Once we started rolling these things out and people could see what the actual implementation look like, all the sudden there was kind of a renewed sense of pride in the purple, and there wasn't the embarrassment of the purple that a lot of people had initially. You know, some of the issues with the purple were, were internally, and as they, you know, they were sort of carried through. And that, that created an internal perception that could then impact how sort of the market and customers perceive the company. And then, you know, once we started digging in and looking at that, you saw that what what felt internally maybe as a weakness and I think he said embarrassment. Because, you know, that was a strength. That was an asset. And again, you know, in, in, you know, the work that I do with the companies, I, you know, I work with, they aren't they aren't thinking about these things at this level always. A lot of times, the presentation layer, is seen really as a very kind of thin veneer that we're putting over the substance underneath. And, certainly over time, those decisions, you know, regarding color and design, you mentioned outdated design elements. Those things matter. So if you have a, a company that's trying to be innovative and communicate, hey, we have new technology, a lot of companies jumping on it. Who's not jumping on AI right now? But they're they're branding says 1980s or 1990s. You just you created, dissonance or a disconnect for the audience where if you look very, you know, dated. But you're saying we have the most modern edge technology. It just doesn't it just doesn't resonate, with people. So you have to strike a balance like you did with, you know, balancing what we have that works and what's an asset and exploring new areas and creativity that that can actually, address the issues. Yeah. And especially with all the AI work that's coming out now and all these different companies, there's kind of a similar visual vibe to a lot of these startups. And it is kind of that high tech, bright, loud, you know, grab attention type of things, type visuals. And if you don't fit into that, if it is more traditional, or maybe it's 4 or 5 years old, your whole visual identity, it's, you know, people are going to think your technology's 4 or 5 years old or worse, ten years old. Quick interruption. I've got an offer for med device, and my son's company is doing at least 3 million a year. But dealing with growth challenges. The first step is really easy. Just connect with me on LinkedIn. The details are below. The rest is to follow. That's it. Let's get back to the podcast. And then people aren't going to bother digging any deeper because. So go to the website and just say, oh, this, this company isn't for me. You know, it's human nature to judge a book by its cover. So if you're visuals, the first thing you that the person sees sends the message that this isn't cutting edge, they're not going to stick around. Exactly. It's funny that there's such a such a commonality across all. There's so many things that look like maybe a starfish or an asterisk, or they all kind of follow the same like central node design. And it it, you know, it was like 5 or 10 years ago where everybody started stripping down their logos to, almost a simple logo type, but 3 or 4 bright colors maybe. And just everything started feeling the same. So all the right now we're we're at a point where we're dealing with similar things in AI, but I'm sure I'm sure it'll change. Design often does that. Yeah. Yeah, it'll it'll broaden. Yeah. What do you think as you are working through that project? That's a lot of work to get done in 90 days. Yeah. What do you think was one of the more impactful areas that, you know, the company addressed that. You can think of one of the most important aspects was kind of the the corporate sales deck. And just that, that first impression of what somebody sends on their first sales call and we really need to get that part right. And that that was an effort that was led by marketing and with sales input, obviously. But it was, you know, we needed to be able to tell that correct story. And that was also part of the the biggest challenge during the 90 days was what is the story we're going to tell? What's our kind of go to market, what are our strengths? What do we want to downplay, and then how do we tell it. So it was determining what the story was we want to tell. And then was how are we going to tell that story. And so the sales stack was kind of the the first thing that we put together really kind of shaped the rest of the messaging that came out, because we needed to identify who the users were, who the prospects were, what would actually get them to reconsider either company, either company from the past. And you know, how we wanted to to pull them into the future and let them know that, no, we were a forward looking company and and, the sales tech was a kind of first big thing that we put together that told that story. So is that the maybe the first point of contact, maybe we'd sometimes call it the tip of the spear. And so, you know, often the first impression is the, the, the longest lasting, you had an interesting problem here and that you had some previous identities and some, you know, perceptions and, things sort of established in the mind, you know, in the market. Was there anything that was particularly challenging, or notable? One of the challenges was keeping the things that did really well from the acquired company, and then applying that to the brand of the acquiring company. So the company that was acquired had top level customer support. It was renowned, you know, one Stevie Awards, and they were just really known they had 100% in sourced, customer support. And they they were really known for that. So one of the things that we heard from the customers was find products or new whatever, don't mess up my customer support. So we had to we and a lot of it was just calming down customers that their experience in their products and services weren't going to get worse. And so customer support was a big thing. So we needed to kind of regrow that customer support message from the original company on to the new company and kind of let the let the older customers know, yes, it's still going to be there and let the newer customers know, hey, you're now going to get a higher level of support. So that that was kind of one of the main things that we needed to, to use to, to settle down, because obviously our competitors were jumping in and probably telling them, oh, you should just buy from us because they're going to fall apart because the, you know, the the acquiring company doesn't have good customer support, and they're not going to adopt this other model because it's really expensive. You know, you should just come with us. So meanwhile we were trying to battle that perception and say, no, we are going to stick with it. Here's who's doing it, here are the programs, etc., etc.. So there was a there's a perception and fear in the market, for the existing base and that, that really could have, you know, that could have led to, you know, the thing that they fear the most is that the company would fall apart. And so addressing those things right upfront and dealing with those perceptions, you know, and, and communication, so making sure that you got the message across, of course, there's follow through. You need to actually deliver on that, you know, that that promise and that expectation. But I think I think, one of the points here is that perception can be very, very powerful and it can completely derail something or manage, a crisis. And I think that's important for people to take away here. And design can play, a major role in how that's perceived. It's telling the story and, and yeah, getting rid of the FUD, the fear, uncertainty and distrust that, that a lot of companies have whenever there's or a lot of customers have whenever there's a big change. You know, one of the things that we've talked about and this is this is an area that you really specialize, I think is is bridging the gap between, what we think of as almost two camps if we're getting into the weeds of marketing and design. You are and I, I didn't mention this at the beginning, but you're the author of a book. And, you know, I'd like to talk about that a little bit because, I think you do a great job of making design accessible, to marketers. And by accessible, I don't mean accessibility and making a website usable. What I mean is, simplifying years of training and experience, in a way that provides the right level, of, of guidance for marketers. And I think business people by extension. Let's talk a little bit about that. How did you how did you land on the idea of putting together that book and also if you want, do you have a handy. Yeah, I've got one right here. I have one handy too. It's the visual marketer, by the way. Congratulations on the launch of the book. Tell me a little bit about the story of how you landed on the idea. What was the need? What drove you to to put this together? Thank you. It was kind of a two step process because once I really sprouted up, once ChatGPT came out and it became obvious that a lot of people would start using AI, I realized that a lot of designers were going to start losing their jobs because a company, if they have seven designers, they might not only need three at that point. So I started looking into that a whole lot. But then I had this realization that, well, all that design work is going to go to somebody else, and it's probably going to go to the marketers who are now using Canva, using AI, using any of these other DIY tools. And so they've got the tools, but they don't have any of the training. And I talked to different people over the years who's, you know, different, you know, kind of core marketers who would say to me, my job is so much easier if I had your skills and, you know, because I would tell them, I give them feedback on whatever they're working on visually. So I said, okay, what if I wrote a book and basically taught marketers or business leaders? Here are the basics of design so that you can use these Do-It-Yourself tools and create effective and memorable visuals, not just whatever the template is spitting out to you. So I want to write this book to to help these folks because they're going to be doing the work anyways because I know they're there's a little bit of not pushback, but there's kind of the idea of like, why are you giving away all the secrets of design? And the reality is, these people weren't gonna hire designers anyways. They're using Canva. They think what they're putting out of Canva is good enough. And so my idea was, okay, the folks that are okay with this, they're okay with producing visuals like that. Here are some basics so that you can make more effective and better visuals. Right. And I think that's true in a lot of industries. I think that, we become very protective of the time that we've invested, in our particular area of expertise. And I from my experience, I find that there are plenty of people who are on their journey and they they start off wanting to do the work themselves, and they're looking for guidance, and they're looking to develop an understanding. They're only scratching the surface. And you're I you know, it's doubtful for me that somebody who is sort of in this camp of, you know, the marketer who wants to know enough, enough about design to make them dangerous, is really going to get invested in a, in a large, substantial project. And so I think you're right. I think they're not it's not taking it's not taking work away from us. That's already happened. Yeah. What what you're doing is you're you're really providing, a utility. You're providing a guidance. So we don't all drown in terrible, you know, canvas. Fine. But, you know, Canva templates that I'll use are starting to look kind of the same. So I like that a lot as a resource. And I think there's some really great things in there for you fundamentally, you know, and we're, you know, talking to, you know, entrepreneurs who are, you know, planning and building businesses and people who are in, you know, product marketing. You know, what are some of the, the most important areas of design, that would have the most impact, you know, and there are so many, so many layers of things we could get into. But from your, you know, your perspective, maybe, what are the top three things that they really need to nail that they, you know, they probably couldn't tackle themselves. Yeah, I'd say first and foremost is the the brand identity, the logo. You know, that that's something that you don't want to just use Canva or some AI tool to make your your company logo is one it you can't own it. There's no guarantee that what Canva spits out for you is not going to spit it out for the company down the street. And and also with AI laws, you can't. I believe you can't trademark AI generated, elements. So you can't. If you can't own your your logo, then you're you're already missing out. So that that's an area where you want to hire an actual expert, somebody that knows what they're doing. And, and I know there there are different trains of thoughts where, you know, with a startup, you don't need a real logo until you have a product and market. Because a lot of times people, you know, you see these startups, they get their money and they spend all this money on a logo and then they barely ever. You know, get out of stealth mode. So once you're in a place to actually start doing some branding and marketing, that's when you need your, your logo. So, yeah, hired a professional for that. The other areas I would say is, you know, when it comes to visuals, what are your colors and what are your image treatments? So is it when it comes to the images are using photos. Are you doing some sort of color overlay on the photos. What's the how are the corners? Are they rounded? Are they jagged? Are they square? You know, is it illustration? Is it, you know, little kid illustration. Is it more or a professional looking illustration. You know, there's a lot of different ways you can go with your visuals, but the main thing you want to do is just be consistent. Because when you're consistent, it helps shorten the time that people need to go from what is this to? I understand who it is and if you can shorten that time, then that gives you more time to actually get your message across. So the example I like to give is McDonald's, right? Like we all know the golden arches on the red background. So if you see a banner ad on the side of your web page and you see that the red background in the golden arches, you don't have to stop and think, what is this company? What are they trying to sell me? What am what should I buy? They can jump right straight to that, you know, Quarter Pounder for whatever it cost. They can. They can get right to the offer and right to the sales pitch without having to do that kind of training for branding and identity. So this applies to any business. If you're consistent with your visuals across all touchpoints, then that helps train the audience. Okay, I know who this company is. I know what they stand for and what they're trying to sell. Let's see what their message is today. So it just shortens the entire kind of mental brand cycle. Yeah. It's a it's like a it's like a it's a mental shortcut really. It's what it is. It gets me from A to B faster okay. I mentioned colors and yeah find a, find a color that you can own and stick with it and really kind of push that also because if you can, if you can carve out somewhere on the color spectrum, then it's kind of your space that helps. And it can be, you know, a variation of a basic color, right? If you think, you know, lots of companies use green, but if you think Hulu, that's a very specific green that you see anytime you see anything from Hulu. So that that's another area where it can really help, you know, just kind of owning a particular color. And the treatment, you know, Hulu always has the rounded corners around everything. So they're good when it comes to their visual identity because you know, exactly between the color and kind of the shapes and the visuals that they use. You already know it's Hulu, so now we can actually get into the show. It's not like when you see something that's like, oh, you can watch us on Tubi or MGM plus like you do, your trying to figure out what network it is. Hulu has already shortened that entire process. Yeah, I think that's a good point because I was kind of scrolling through, a million streaming services last night, and you don't actually have to think about it. Hulu is that kind of that bright green. And it just really stands out across, you know, across the the little banners of all the different channels they have. I, you know, I want to go back for a second to something where you were talking about being consistent. And I want to sort of jump off of that point in, choosing your, your general visual style for your company. Because what, what I see a lot of and I, I work in, you know, medtech and life science, and, you know, med device. I do see when we see a lot of blue, and a lot of the companies feel the same. They they or they're, they're not quite interchangeable, but they're very, very close. And again, part of that is, perception that maybe that doesn't matter as much. But then what what I'm really interested in talking about is I'll often see a, you know, a brand, as in a presentation style that is really, really jarring to me. And, and I'm, you know, I, I work in that space. And so I'm sensitive to getting, you know, is sort of presenting to the audience, and meeting their expectation. But, it's, it's really not considered, as much as it should be developing a visual style and the, the, the point I'm trying to get to in this really long, roundabout way is, the way it's sort of the, the trappings of your company, can really influence that first impression with your audience and if we, we choose one path where we're presenting a modern solution, but the way we're presenting it is initially wrapped up in a very dated look. We're going to create a disconnect, and we might not even make it past the initial introduction. You know, I have a client from a few years ago that absolutely loved a logo that was done in the 70s and not a great logo at all. It was overly complicated. It wasn't even right for that time. Let's just say that it had, a globe in it because they're global. And so, you know, it was overly cliche. It was really dated. The sales team really didn't love it. It wasn't doing them any any favors. And they, they wouldn't move on from it because they just really liked it and they were attached to it, but it wasn't serving them in the space. And so I think, I think the choices, you know, we make, we want them to be consistent. I would want founders to think about, you know, this is not window dressing. You know, it's the car that you show up in for the, you know, for the sales meeting. It's how your, you know, your office presents. It's, you know, the impression you make when you walk on stage. These are people make super quick judgments even in health care and devices and life sciences. You know, where where we talk about, well, we're more substantial than the color of our brand. Well, people, at every level, in all walks of life, make quick judgments. They they look at something and they think, yes or no, very, very quickly. So does does, you know, I guess my question to you is, you know, a where where maybe does that sit in your, you know, level of importance and in getting, you know, an idea or message across for these companies? We talk about consistency. What about, the message that we're sending. How how important is that to consider when you're developing your visual style? It it's critically important. And one of the things that I've found is that in engineer lead companies, they tend not to care about how it looks. A whole lot because they're more fixated on how it works. You know, which which makes sense, because if you see a lot of engineers walking around, they look like they just mowed the lawn and then walked into work, right? Like they they they're not concerned about how they're presenting themselves to the world, which explains why they don't care. You know how the product looks because they're only focused on how it it works. So one of the things that you need to do is say, people are going to ignore this great thing that you built if we present it this way, but if we're allowed to put a wrapper on it, put some, you know, pizzazz behind it. If you want to use a data term, then, you know, then people will pay attention to it and, and all your great work will be able to be seen and used by all the people that you want them to see. You alluded to it earlier. We are long past the build it and they will come, mentality. But you know a lot of or we're past the build it and they will come world. But a lot of these engineers still think I built this great thing. Look how great it is. Of course everyone's going to want to buy it, but that's not the reality of how things work anymore. Yeah, I think a good proxy is really the, you know, the iPhone versus the Android debate. You know, you can you can look at a lot of you can sort of split the world into those. Well, three camps, really. There's a group of people who just don't care. They can't even tell the difference. But aside from those people, you know, we have the people who say, well, you know, iPhone, iPhone is the phone for kids. And, you know, I love my Android because, you know, I can do anything with it and make it do anything. And they're really focused on that. That's a good proxy for a little bit of this conversation. And we are in that iPhone era where presentation and usability and, and really the, the end customer experience is, you know, just as important as whatever it is under the hood that makes it tick. So part of what I do today, as a fractional CMO, is I will go to conferences and trade shows with my clients and look at, other attendees and see who it might make sense to partner with or, develop a distribution deal with, or in some cases, acquire. And, you know, we were, you know, a few months back, we were walking the floor and we were looking at this company in that company. And I noticed that what drew the CEO's? He was drawn to those very bright, bright colors. Modern, big lights. These are, you know, these are small, you know, ten by ten booths. But the companies that he picked out as, as companies to initially focus on, and he didn't realize this, were the companies that really stood out in that space. What puts the point home is there was a company there that had a very, very cool AI application in a physical device, and that device was the cheapest industrial, very beige, very 80s looking box and not in a cool retro way. This is very much a this is literally the cheapest box I can get to put this thing into. And then, that, that sort of thinking, that sort of budgetary, this is not important. I just need to be there and put this in front of people and they will buy it, build it, and they will come. He didn't get any traffic at that booth, and that was for us. It was the best opportunity, for a future acquisition. And we we almost overlooked it because in a quick scan at a visual level, they just didn't show up. In fact, we sort of overlooked them because they just looked like they were bringing old school technology. Now, we know that the engineers listening to this or the clinicians would be like, I would never make a decision based on that. But, you know, in many of these cases, you aren't the buyer. You know, if you put put one of these pieces of equipment in, you know, a modern space that is all bright, you know, bright whites and polished and stainless steel and, it has a certain, you know, modern, clean feel to it. And then you throw up like this beige box that is brand new. It's brand new tech in there, but it's wrapped in this really dated, you know, presentation. You you may just, you know, you know, somebody might be blind to it because they perceive it as old and dated and, and that is everything about design is really putting the right presentation in the right wrapper. I that creates that connection. It tells me, okay, you're part of my tribe. You're part of my community. You're you're you're what? I'm aspiring, to have and, you know, in my space and around me and the tools that I use. So I think you made a really good point about that. Any any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense where your brand is, what people think about you, and if you're presenting yourself in a bad way, then nobody's going to take you seriously. So it's a perfect example that you gave of, hey, this is a real cutting edge, but nobody's paying attention because it's wrapped in in a bunch of old dated design. You know, I see a lot of companies that and this is coming back to a part of the conversation before, but they put something together that's good enough for today, and they just kind of run with it. And then suddenly they wake up and somebody, you know, typically marketers are knocking at the door saying, we have to do something about this brand because where it's actually hurting us right now, that's that's typically too late. Right? It's it's already I mean, you have to fix it still. But if you're having that conversation, you haven't addressed it early enough. Given given what you've seen and understanding that as a solo entrepreneur who's typically doing most of this journey on their own up until a certain point, do you think there's a there's a time or a point, you know, point in the journey where, okay, now now's the perfect time to start looking at the brand and the website and going from, you know, I spun up a build it myself sort of situation to, okay, now I should bring in the right level of expertise. Yeah, it's probably when you jump from all referral business to trying to get net new organic business. And I would think that, you know, because when you first start out it's the people, you know, they kind of, you know, get things going. And then once you're trying to get to that next level, get an audience that doesn't know you, doesn't like you, doesn't trust you, you need something to to be able to put it out there so that they can start to believe you and trust you when they see what you're saying, because you don't have that built in trust yet. I think that's a good point. I was talking to somebody yesterday where a company was really struggling and frustrated. And when talking to them about how they grew, they had a wide network to start. And so they had that network effect where it was very easy to sell because somebody was always introducing them. And now they've, they've sort of they haven't quite tapped out of that market yet. But the growth isn't there, the velocity isn't there. And there are a lot of external complicating factors. So there's I, there's more competition now. This thing that they owned, you know, ten years ago isn't quite as cool. And powerful as it was. And so, so, you know, going to, you know, selling to strangers is a lot harder than selling to someone who, you know, you you have a mutual connection. And they did a, you know, a warm introduction. And a lot of companies kind of hit that, that tipping point. And they have this false sense of, well, I have a good brand because it's been so easy up until this point. And they don't know. So I really like that that recommendation on, you know, when you start reflecting on that now it's time to start thinking about, you know, tooling those things up. Where would you start? You have a company that has to redo everything, you know, we okay the corporate brand, maybe the logo. But how do you get that going? I think if you, you know, reach out to your network, see if you have designers or marketers that can know these things because it is it's kind of the two sides of it where you need the visuals, but then you also need the messaging because if, if and it's kind of interesting where I've seen conversations that say, what's more important, copier design and the thing I always say or what comes first, the thing I always say is good copy can good design, can save bad copy, but bad design will murder great copy. And so you need both of those to work hand-in-hand. But if you don't have the design, people will ignore you. But if you have, you know, great messaging, but it's, you know, it's wrapped in a poor container, that's not going to be good, but a great design isn't going to be able to cover for bad messaging or bad product for very long. Right? Is that I mean we're getting we're getting attention. We're creating alignment like this is this is something that fits within my worldview. It's something that I want. And then it's it's compelling me. It's building a relationship. I mean I think that copy though is a virtual salesperson. I would say are there any sort of concrete tips that you would provide to, you know, a founder, you know, a, you know, somebody kind of at a senior level who's just, you know, designed isn't really their thing. I was talking to somebody else the other day. They're like, I don't know what you did, but it's magic. I could, you know, I could never do anything like this. Anything. Any recommendations for them? To help them sort of start getting their head around, you know, design and presentation communications. Yeah, I would say my my first bit of advice was it's kind of twofold where it is, you know, start noticing what catches your eye, but then also realize that you're probably not the customer. So it shouldn't just be what catches your eye. And so it is kind of survey what your competitors are doing, what the folks who are doing it best, what are they doing, and what can you kind of mimic and improve upon if you have the right tools or the right people around you? So when it comes to that, the visuals or the messaging, you know, see what works almost like like a scrapbook. One of the things that I talk about in the book is start a Pinterest board. Whenever you see something that that you like or a particular customer that you're trying or I'm sorry, competitor that you're trying to emulate, just grab it in there and you'll start to see visual patterns that you might not have seen from an individual banner ad or an e-book or something, or even the website. But once you start to see a whole lot of these different things all on one board, you'll start to see patterns and and you realize what it is that's catching your eye. And that's that's kind of a quick way to learn about what what's eye catching to you. And then hopefully what's eye catching to their customers who you want to be your customers. I think that's a great point, especially if you don't have a, a place to start from. Just sort of scrapbooking, if you will, ideas, for things that interest you and are attractive to you. And I would, I would stack on top of that. When you're building the brand for a company, you don't want to look like everybody else, right? You want to take inspiration from, but you don't. You don't want to copy because you don't want to create confusion. You don't want to accidentally market for them, but you also don't want to be so different that you're discounted out of hand. The first time that somebody interacts with your brand where you it doesn't look like you fit in in the space. And so there's this, this kind of Goldilocks zone, of unique, you know, brand identity, but also plays within the ecosystem of the solutions that are in market. Jim, thank you so much. We're going to drop a link to visual marketer, below. Where where can we get that? Where can we pick it up? It's on Amazon. I also have it on visual marketer eco and yeah, anywhere it's. Yeah, Barnes and Noble, wherever you get books. Except probably the physical bookstore. You can you can get a copy of it, but but the, what you were saying about kind of standing out, I've got a little line that I use for that, which is you. You want to stand out, but you don't want to stand in the wrong crowd. So what are the examples I have in the book is I hired a designer to make a Goldman Sachs logo. That's like a Swedish death metal band, you know, because it's like, okay, you know, a golden Goldman Sachs is. But when they look completely different like that, you would never trust them with your money. That happens with companies where they they simply don't know enough about how that works or they don't really value it. They don't see the importance of it, and they don't rely on a partner to help guide them down that path, which is what you and I try to do right. All right. Well, thank you, Jim. It's great. Thank you. If you made it here. Thank you. If you haven't already, like, share and subscribe to the channel. If you want to learn more about this topic, I expand on it below as well as in my LinkedIn newsletter. That's all for now. More soon.