Branding and Brand Strategy for Growing Companies
Branding for Restless Companies and Driven Entrepreneurs
This is a must-read List for every entrepreneurs, startup, business leader, and brand that is ready to dominate its space, crush the competition, and truly excel. This is branding insight at its finest. For all business that want to win in the game of branding.
The greatest threat to your brand isn’t AI. It’s competing on price. Every founder I sit with asks how their business survives a machine that writes copy faster and builds funnels cheaper. Wrong villain. The thing killing your business is quiet, and it shows up as one symptom: customers choosing you on price. The moment …
What if you could steal the playbook from a company that sells the world’s most “boring” product? Not a tech company. Not a luxury brand. Not a category that lends itself to storytelling. A $25 billion condiment company with a 150-year track record. And a recipe that hasn’t changed since Ulysses S. Grant was president. …
Most companies treat “brand loyalty vs. client retention” like synonyms. They are not. And confusing them is one of the most expensive strategic mistakes a growing company can make because the strategies that accomplish one actively undermine the other. Here’s the uncomfortable truth most branding agencies won’t tell you: you need both, and they require …
For enterprise CMOs managing $50M+ marketing budgets, the cost of misreading customers isn’t a rounding error. It’s a strategic failure. The emotion analytics market hit $5.1 billion in 2025, yet most AI solutions still only read words, not people. Keyword analysis can’t detect hesitation, sarcasm, or emotional intent.When AI misreads humans, strategy gets built on …
Sales teams blame follow-up. Leadership blames the market. Everyone blames the buyer. But here’s what’s actually happening: Your brand strategy isn’t the problem. Your lack of one is. Buyers aren’t afraid of change. They’re afraid of being wrong. And when every option sounds the same? Doing nothing becomes the safest choice. Between 40-60% of B2B …
In 2026, AI makes polish cheap and sameness inevitable—which means “safe” has become a silent killer. The Brand Intervention Blueprint distills the core thinking behind Brand Intervention to help brands identify what’s making them invisible, reclaim strategic clarity, and build true differentiation that creates demand, loyalty, and pricing power. If your brand looks professional yet …
The rules of brand discovery have fundamentally changed. While 83% of consumers still find brands through online ads and 52% turn to search engines for research, the journey to your brand no longer starts where you think it does. According to the latest industry research from Lippincott and Deloitte, brands are facing a pivotal shift: …
It was the deafening question in the room: “How to Sell in 2026?” Standing on stage at TOTALITY 2 in Tennessee, looking out at 100+ rebels, I realized something:This wasn’t a conference. It was a mutiny. Dale Dupree didn’t gather people to “learn sales.”He gathered them to torch the playbook that’s been killing businesses for …
Ready to ignite some real, sustainable growth and ditch the endless sea of me-too brands? Then buckle up. Recently, I had the absolute blast of going toe-to-toe with the legendary Brad Szollose on his Awakened Nation podcast—talking branding, differentiation, and my new book, Rich Brand Poor Brand: How to Unleash Your David in a World …
In 2009, Airbnb was losing money on air mattresses. By 2024, they hit $8.4B in revenue. The difference? Came down to one overlooked signal in their data. The truth? Most billion-dollar brands aren’t built on intuition. They’re built on data signals everyone else missed. Here’s how 6 major brands spotted similar transformation moments: And the …
Branding must be fearless. Not tentative. To do that, we must know what branding isn’t (and what it is). Here’s what rebranding isn’t: Here’s what rebranding actually is: Want to rebrand the right way? Embrace the hard stuff. Boldly. The INC 5000 Company With a Vision (and the Guts to Look) This is exactly what Fortis Business …
After learning my clients had generated over $4 billion in revenue in 2024, I wanted today’s article to be insightful by sharing my entrepreneurial journey. ACTION TIP #1: Know your niche, own the spaceDefine what you do better than anyone else, and own that narrative relentlessly. If your brand doesn’t dominate a specific conversation, it’s …
. When George Bryant, a New York Times bestselling author and podcast host extraordinaire, who helps others achieve business success invited me to join him for a conversation, I knew it was going to be more than just a chat. It was going to be a branding smackdown—the kind that wakes up businesses stuck in …
There’s a good time to get your brand in shape and a shitty time to do it. Building a brand is like riding a wild rollercoaster. One minute you’re on top of the world, and the next, you’re getting tossed around like your favorite piece of clothing in the dryer. When your brand feels like …
Many companies attempt a rebrand. But surviving a rebrand? That is a milestone few ever forget. Few see the impact of a rebrand in real-time: raising over $200K in less than 30 minutes, which secures future growth and service to the community. I previously shared this journey here and spoke with Harvard Executive Leadership Coach …
All leads are not created equal. In fact, some leads are actually quite bad for your business and morale. If you’re not careful, you can end up wasting a lot of time and money on leads that don’t convert into sales, growth, and lasting relationships. So how do you determine which leads are worth pursuing? This …
It’s vital when you hear “brand expert” to know how to tell the real from the charlatan. Unfortunately, the term “expert” is commonly a self-proclaimed status with little evidence to back it up. So how do you tell? The Title “Brand Expert” Isn’t a Fact. It’s Someone’s Conclusion. I was reading an article in a …
I hate posts that offer a 7-day checklist. Why? Because 98% of the time, they’re written to give us some shortcut hack, rather than empowering us to think for ourselves and problem-solve intelligently. Every 7-Day Checklist I’ve Seen Overlooks This Those who look only at the numbers and lose sight of what made those numbers …
This branding masterclass slays ordinary thinking because “ordinary thinking” no longer works in business and staying ahead. (That’s not me talking. That’s the alumni who have gotten as much as a 2,333% ROI on their tuition.) Ordinary is vanilla ice cream. Extraordinary is the same vanilla ice cream, presented in a different way: with roasted …
How vital is the importance of branding? Just ask Steve Griggs, one of New York City’s premier landscapers who is now a regular on Bravo’s hit TV series, Backyard Envy. Or Derek De Vette who is at the top of his game as a premier PR expert and event producer for some of the world’s top …
Those who work from home need to remember one thing: working from home doesn’t define us. It’s something we define. Just like a canvas doesn’t determine whether a painting will be a masterpiece. Just like a piano doesn’t dictate what type of song you’ll compose. Or a language determining what kind of screenplay or book …
Most brand advice is useless. Not because it’s wrong, exactly, but because it’s safe. “Be authentic.” “Tell your story.” “Stay consistent.” These aren’t traits of exceptional brands. They’re the participation trophies of brand strategy. Exceptional brands don’t emerge from following the same advice everyone else follows. They emerge from making hard, specific choices that most …
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple What you’re about to read features 23 world-class entrepreneurs. At least 4 of them are billionaires. At least 8 of them are NY Times Bestselling authors. …
“The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.” Albert Einstein Authenticity. It’s best when it’s real. When reorienting a brand and clarifying their core reason for being, companies are too often …
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.” Stephen Hawking Can every brand grow explosively when others (that could be thriving) die a lonely and forgettable death? Interesting question. Some companies think it’s how deep one’s pockets are. But Microsoft, with its deep pockets, has proven time and again that …
