Tag Archives: branding
I Have A Brand And It Haunts Me
I was talking to my pal “Jonas” who recently decided to freelance (vs building a multi-consultant business) when he left a bigger firm to do his own thing. Jonas is a global talent guy who works across the planet for … Continue reading
Why Is Your Brand As A Consultant Important?
I learned the true value of a distinct consultant brand AFTER I left one of the global giants to build my first firm. We positioned ourselves as the funkier alternative to the big boys: filled with mastered degreed refugees who’d … Continue reading
Your Marketing Doesn’t Have To Be A Life Sentence
Your brand is the promise—implied and explicit—you make to your ideal clients and buyers. It’s the essential truth of your firm, your services and products and, well, you. It’s the emotional tug to your sweet-spot audience that creates evangelists to … Continue reading
How To Delight Clients By Being Different
Unless you were the star athlete or prom queen, being “different” in high school was challenging at best. Your peers liked conformity—you were expected to follow the unwritten rules of their time and place. So if you were the nerd, … Continue reading
What’s A Brand Voice—And Why You Need To Own Yours
Think of your brand voice like this: you go to a cocktail party chock-full of your ideal prospective clients. How do you want them to remember you? As warm and engaging? Singularly brilliant and a tad aloof? Interestingly quirky? Steady … Continue reading
You Are Not A Can Of Soup
A can of soup has no passion. It has no aspirations, no point of view, no motivation—it simply takes up shelf space waiting to be chosen. You are not a can of soup. But you are a brand. A living, … Continue reading
Creating Non-Sucky Packaging For Your Consulting Business
When I started my first consulting business (pre-internet), the first thing I did was collect the brochures from each of the largest competing firms in my market. My goal was to understand how they positioned and marketed themselves so I … Continue reading
Who’s In YOUR Brand Neighborhood?
Let’s start with a quick definition: your brand neighborhood is ANY person, product or service that you’d love to “live” on your professional street. One you’d happily hang with all day long if only you could. So if you’re an … Continue reading
Naming Your Company (And Your Services And Products)
When I co-founded my first company, we agonized over our first big decision: our name. After a couple of interminable sessions covering the walls of a Chicago conference room with color-coded sticky notes, we finally emerged with an idea that … Continue reading
How To See Your Story
One of the great challenges when you’re selling yourself is “seeing” your story so you can share it. Crossing the gulf from just another fill-in-the-blank to utterly compelling means discovering the threads that tie together the intricate (and sometimes seemingly … Continue reading
