brandUP Your Business Podcast
Hey, I’m Matt Jackson, and I’ve been through the highs and lows of building brands that make an impact. On the BrandUP Your Business Podcast, I take you along on my journey and sit down with other entrepreneurs to share the secret sauce of branding, marketing, and sales that actually works.
In each episode, you’ll hear real stories, fun conversations, and actionable tips to take your business from zero to hero. If you’re ready to level up your brand and learn from the best, this is the place for you!
Let’s turn your business into something unforgettable. Tune in and join the fun!
🌟 Connect with us: brandupyourbusiness.com
Want to learn all about branding? Check Out Our Book on Amazon brandUP Your Business: Elevate Your Business With Branding
brandUP Your Business Podcast
Episode 10: 7 Day Brand Breakthrough Niche or Die: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Brand Clarity
Ever feel like your business is invisible? Like you're working harder than everyone else but nobody seems to notice? You're not alone, and there's a specific reason this happens.
Welcome to Day 1 of the 7 Day Brand Breakthrough, where we tackle the foundation of what makes businesses thrive or struggle. This isn't just theory—I've implemented these exact principles to put tens of thousands of dollars on my books, and they can help you reach your first $10,000 too.
The journey begins with a stark warning: "We serve everyone" is the death sentence for your brand. When you try to be everything to everyone, you become nothing to no one. I learned this the hard way, wasting $5,000 on ads for my pressure washing business because I was generic, unmemorable, and unclear about who I was serving. Your brand isn't just your logo—it's how people perceive your business and the emotional connection you create with customers.
Through my evolution from "random pressure washing guy" to "Matt the Driveway Guy," I discovered the power of shifting focus from technical specifications (that customers don't care about) to customer experience, credibility, and emotional benefits. This transformation built a business where customers now come to me, referrals flow steadily, and my brand is recognized far beyond my local area.
The three pillars of an unshakable brand—clarity, consistency, and connection—provide the framework for creating a business that stands out. Can customers understand your brand in just three seconds? Does your message instantly communicate value? These questions determine whether potential clients choose you or scroll past.
Ready to transform your business from invisible to irresistible? Complete today's worksheet exercise to define your brand in one powerful sentence, then join our Facebook community to share your work and get feedback. Your journey from forgettable to unforgettable starts now.
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What's up, guys, and welcome to the first day of 7 Day Brand Breakthrough. This is going to be an exciting day because we're going to start from scratch and really focus on building the foundations of your brand. So if you guys are ready, let's kick this thing off. Through the development of the 7 Day Brand Breakthrough, I've been able to really improve my brand and sharpen stuff up and I've seen a definite ROI just in my business recently by implementing the steps of that we have created and refined that still work today. So if you guys think, oh, this is just a generic course, that's not the case whatsoever. This is a training exercise that I have implemented and continue to implement and sharpen the sword and sharpen the ax and use daily in my business. So this is actively helping me put tens of thousands of dollars on my books as well as it'll help you put the first $10,000 on your books. So let's kick this thing off. The objective here is to turn your business from invisible to irresistible why your business feels invisible and how to fix that. You're working really hard but nobody's noticing. Customers choose competitors, even when you're better. Your brand isn't speaking loud enough. Branding isn't just your logo and people don't care you fix this and then the customers will start chasing you, rip that boring business. So the urgent warning I have for all entrepreneurs whether you're new or you're old, you've been in business for a long time or you're just starting out we serve everyone. That is no go. You don't want to be wide open, generic, bland. So the number one thing if you don't get anything else from this course, is to figure out your niche. We serve everyone is going to be the death sentence for your brand. You've probably heard this expression before. The riches are in the niches. So Walmart and Tesla they don't market the same way. People may buy the same car and shop at Walmart, but they're segmented out differently, their brand feels different and they're going for a different type of person. And that's what we're going to do here with this course. We're going to outline everything that is vital in order to gain that clarity in your brand and build that strong foundation. So we are shifting away from generic, boring, blending in invisible and really shifting and dialing it into how to be that irresistible brand. If you try to be everything to everyone, you'll be nothing to no one.
Speaker 1:I wasted $5,000 on ads when I first started my pressure washing business because I chose to be generic. I had money that I tossed in without the knowledge, without the skill, without the idea of what I wanted Matt the driveway guy to be. I was just pressure washing. So of course, I didn't have Matt the driveway guy set up. I didn't have my marketing, I didn't have my logo creation. I didn't have that emotion behind what I meant and created. With Matt the driveway guy, I was generic. I said I can pressure wash your driveway. Well, that's a commodity. And I spent $5,000. I didn't get a lot of business and I may be broke even on that ad spend, which is not very good. So all that happened because I was putting money on something without spending time to develop that brand first. And with BrandUp, you guys are in the right place because we will take whatever you're working with, break it down to zero, build that foundation up and then, by the end of this, you will have an irresistible brand.
Speaker 1:So let's go into what truly is branding Like. Really, branding is how people perceive your business. So think about this People make decisions not with their rational mind, but they make decisions with their emotions. You know when you are watching something on TV and a commercial hits the screen and you say, wow, I want that you weren't thinking actively about rationally, that is a cool thing to have. I want that. No, the branding took over and that emotion hooked you in and that's exactly what we want to do with our business. So in order to have a successful brand, you have to have a strong emotion and a strong emotional connection to those customers. A strong brand has a customer line up willing to pay more for you because that emotion that we create in our branding. So here's an example how can Starbucks charge $5 for a cup of coffee, but a gas station people don't want to spend 99 cents. It's the same thing in the same container. The only difference is there's a logo on one and not the other. They've done a fantastic job of creating an image behind what Starbucks is as opposed to the generic coffee. Here's a case study on Matt the driveway guy.
Speaker 1:This is how we evolved as a brand from, like I said, losing $5,000 on ads because I didn't have clear branding and figuring it out from that way. So we started out as a random pressure washing guy. I was a random business guy. I wanted to start a business, do something on the sides. I didn't have the acumen that I do now with branding and marketing and I didn't understand how truly important it is to dial in that brand. And by doing so I was very generic, like a lot of you guys. I probably was throwing out flyers, I was going door to door, I was asking everybody I knew, but it wasn't. It was landing on deaf ears because people couldn't figure out what I did. People didn't have any emotional attachment to what I did and they just said "'Oh, you're just one of the other guys "'who has a pressure washer, "'or one of the other guys who has a lawnmower, "'or one of the other guys trying to hustle to make money'". And the objective from day one is to separate myself from that. So we evolved.
Speaker 1:We realized that branding wasn't about a service pressure washing, clean driveways, clean houses People don't care about that. So if you think, oh, I have the best equipment, I'm so great at the technical of cleaning a house, I'm so great at making windows sparkly clean, I can cut the grass better than the other guy, people don't care. That is not what branding is about. We wanted to, and this is what we learned over time. We shifted our focus to the customer experience, credibility and authority behind what we did, as opposed to the technical of what we did. Now let me explain. We led with customer service, ease of use, friendly face, fun, energy, smiling, professionalism, uniform team. We led with all these things that people care about. People don't care about how many gallons per minute the machine has. People don't care about what chemicals you use in the driveway. As technicians, as service providers, as business owners, we are in the weeds. So we care about the technical of how we do our goods and service. We care about the little things. The customer doesn't. We're going to lose people if we start talking about the technical of what we do, and so that shift was a vital shift for me. That really changed the trajectory of my business and made it a lot easier and created so much momentum where I was able to really take over and brand myself in the local area. So the result from that people now come to me. We also get a steady line of referrals and the brand sells itself and we're recognized outside of our local area because of social media marketing and because we've been able to put ourselves out there and people all over the globe have recognized our business.
Speaker 1:More about the business. Here's Matt the driveway guy. If you can't tell it's a striking resemblance of the two of us. I created an image that was about me as a college kid, hustling. So yeah, we're talking about the resemblance of the emotion and we tried, with the creation of this logo, to be super memorable, super in your face. If you see that on trucks, it's going to be everywhere you go. So that was the objective with the logo creation and, as you can tell, it's on our hats, it's on our shirts and in other pictures you'll be able to see it's on our trucks as well. We chose to do this as opposed to be XYZ pressure washing, because you're gonna remember oh, call Matt, he's the guy.
Speaker 1:So the difference between branding and marketing. So you guys have probably heard the differences between branding and marketing. Branding is who you are, your reputation, and then marketing is gonna be how you tell people who you are, your reputation, and then marketing is going to be how you tell people who you are. So you get branding right and then the marketing becomes effortless. The cost of bad branding, my $5,000 mistake. I know I talk about this, but when I was starting out a business and you make a $5,000 mistake, that's a lot of money and can be disheartening. So I spent $5,000 on Facebook ads and I got nothing. Now why was that? Because my brand wasn't clear and no one trusted it.
Speaker 1:Marketing can't fix weak branding. When you market, you're putting money and putting energy and throwing something out into the wind. If what you're throwing out, that message, doesn't resonate with anybody, nobody's gonna care, there's gonna be no reason for them to reach out to you and it's not going to represent your business how it should. So there's not going to be a high return on investment. So the objective of getting your branding in check is to make sure that message to your customer is laser tight and rock solid.
Speaker 1:So what we're going to do here? The three key pillars of an unshakable brand Number one clarity Know exactly who you serve and why. Number two consistency you want to deliver the same experience every single time. And number three connection Make customers feel like they belong. Your brand message what does that stand for? Your brand should instantly communicate value. What problem do you solve? How do you make life easier for your customers? Two things to help that out are going to be. So what does your brand stand for? Your brand should instantly communicate value and how do you go about it? Ask yourself two things what problem do you solve and how do you make life easier for your customers? Get that in check and you'll be pretty good.
Speaker 1:So here's another fun rule and principle I like to use. We'll call it the three second rule. Can customers understand your brand instantly? So, within three seconds of seeing something, if your customers don't recognize and have a certain feeling attached to your brand, you need to work on making it better. So if somebody lands on your website, do they know immediately what you do? If not, you're using your tons of business. Here's an example why simple, clear branding wins every time.
Speaker 1:Take it back to the math. The driveway guy picture my emotion showcases me, matt. A big, fun, friendly character emoji with my name in big letters. So that's the first thing you're going to see. You're going to recognize the pressure washing wand and it's going to say the driveway guy. So you're going to, you're going to recognize it all very quickly. It's going to convey a emotion and a message to the customer. We see this a lot in pressure washing. It's like here's a roof line and it says something services. Well, what does that mean? In three seconds? I'm not going to be able to figure out what service you do or what you mean, so I'm going to lose that emotional connection.
Speaker 1:Remember, in the beginning of today, we were talking about trying to serve everyone is the worst thing you could possibly do, and that's brand suicide. We're going to talk about this, why trying to serve everyone will destroy your brand. If you target everyone, you reach nobody. That's a pretty profound statement, but let's go into what that actually means. You want to find your niche, more money in the niche, less stress, laser tight on your focus and people start to come to you because you become the expert for that need. You're solving the problem for your customers and you're the expert in that problem. Example the difference between a general handyman versus a luxury kitchen remodeler. When you think about it, we're all doing the same things and sometimes we're using the same subs, but what separates the guy that wins all the awards versus the guy who's struggling to pay his bills? Difference is gonna be their branding and how they're positioning and how they're communicating with their customers.
Speaker 1:Okay, here's a quick exercise you can do. I gave you a workbook and a worksheet that is part of this program and every day we need to complete and fill it out so that way you can create a tailored plan on top of the lessons you're learning here. So here you go, define your brand in one sentence, get out a piece of paper and fill in the blanks. You want to say I helped the target audience that you're going after solve a problem of what so they can benefit, and we just fill that in. So here you go. For me it would be I help homeowners restore their driveways so they feel proud of their homes. My target audience is the homeowners that I'm going to go after here. So when we're creating the brand, we're saying I'm going after the homeowners to restore their driveways so they feel proud of their homes, and then that's the target audience homeowners. The problem is going gonna be their dirty driveways and the benefit is they're feeling proud.
Speaker 1:A lot of times we say we clean driveways, but make sure that we throw in the emotion, because this goes back to kind of a sales philosophy as well. You have sales 101. You have to sell the benefit. You don't sell the feature. The feature would be a clean driveway. The benefit is something that you feel proud of. Focus on the feelings attached to the benefits that you provide, instead of just saying, hey, I help homeowners clean their driveway. What does that mean? I help homeowners clean their driveway so they feel proud of their homes. That's the emotional connection that we're wanting to make. So post your sentence in the Facebook group, if you guys are in the brand up group, and we will refine and help share everything like that. So go to Facebook, brand up your business group, get in that brand up group and that little mastermind group. Log in there and we can share each other's feedback and help each other out.
Speaker 1:Another thing that's important why your visual identity matters, but it's not everything. Your logo, your colors, your fonts should reinforce your brand message. Great design attracts attention, but your message is what makes people buy. So we just discussed in the last few slides the importance of the messaging, the importance of finding the niche, finding clarity in who we serve and what benefit we do to them. We wanna make that one person feel a certain way, and what better way to kind of turn the volume up of that message than to identify visual cues and create emotion and create a fun logo behind it? So we said too your logo is not your brand, but it's part of it and what we're going to talk about in this slide is how we can make the visual identity tie into it all and really improve stuff. Think of all this as like a volume knob you lock in the brand. That is your message. You throw on your marketing, you throw on your logos, you throw on your colors, you throw on all that and you're just slowly turning up the volume to be louder and louder and as you do that, you're attracting more people to you, so you're allowing your brand to work for you. So a great design attracts attention, but your message is what makes people to buy, and that's kind of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1:When I had a generic logo and I didn't have my emoji, people didn't see me for who they see me as today, why people trust Apple before they even touch their product. Everybody has iPhones nowadays and on the back you usually have a logo. I use a MacBook Pro, I use an iPhone, I have an iPad. I don't have to individually test each one and spec each one out, because I know with that logo that has been trusted throughout its existence, I can buy it and it'll be a good product, and that's the objective we're going for here.
Speaker 1:So here are three quick wins, three simple ways to strengthen your brand today. I know we've gone through a lot, so we want to simplify everything and, as we wrap up the day, we want to create some calls to actions. That way you absorb the information, you understand the information at a cognitive level, you do the exercises and then you apply yourself. So, number one update your social media bios with a clear brand message. You got Facebook, you got Instagram, you got LinkedIn, you got YouTube. All these platforms, you have all these connections.
Speaker 1:Make sure, when they go to it, they know exactly what you do, who you are, who your customer is, how you make your customer feels and all that. Number two make sure your website instantly explains what you do. As soon as you go to the website, boom, first three seconds. Remember, we're talking about that. We want them to know what we do, who we serve and how we make them feel. And then, lastly, ask a friend if you didn't know me, what would you think my business does? That is a great way to do it. So here's some steps. As we close up day one, we're going to get ready for day two. So make sure, guys, fill out that worksheet below and get everything ready and do those exercises to really craft your brand. Clarity, and we get ready. We'll get ready and excited for day two.
