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If you would prefer to read, here’s the transcript from the video:
Bryan Dulaney, “Alright guys super excited to be here today with you and I have my good friend, Re Perez who is a branding genius, and I met Re a couple year ago at another one of our friend’s events, and we’ve know for about three years now. And yeah, so thank you so much for being here.”
Re Perez, “Yeah, I’m excited to be here man, it’s always a pleasure, I love doing these things with friends who have a good heart, good business and provide a ton of value for people, so thanks for inviting me.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Yeah, absolutely Re. And so today, in this video, I ask Re to just give wisdom, to just drop his wisdom. He’s a genius when it comes to branding. He’s helped hundreds of brands and many names that you probably know, brands a lot of experts who now have seven figure businesses and part of the reason for that I believe is because of the epic job that you’ve done with helping them to brand.”
Re Perez, “Thank you.”
Bryan Dulaney, “So today, I want to talk to Re about, what are the elements of making a brand instantly noticed? Like in today’s world of online marketing, every Tom, Dick and Harry is an expert these days and there’s tons of companies that are advertising. So the space of Facebook advertising is become more and more saturated. So I asked Re if he could come into the studio here and we could talk about just candidly, openly about what makes a brand stand out and what makes your brand stand out?”
Re Perez, “Awesome. Well it’s interesting because I started the business about seven years ago. And the first thing that I have to really say is that, let’s get clear on what a brand is and what it’s not. Because it really kind of sets the tone for you to be able to hear the rest of the conversation. So in my mind, a brand, it’s not your logo, it’s not your tagline, it’s not your new website and these are all important things from a branding and from a marketing perspective, but your brand is a perception and it’s a desired perception that you want to have in the marketplace. So technically you don’t own your brand. It resides in the minds of the people that you’re communicating to. And so to then answer your question, well how do you get your brand to stand out, is you want to speak directly to the people that you’re targeting and creating the perception that you want them to have that appeals to them, that resonates to them.”
“Now I know that sounds conceptual and we’ll probably go a bit more deeper in terms of what that means on a strategic and tactical basis, but it’s creating the right perception for your right audiences that triggers in their mind, this is something that’s either new or different or something that is relevant to me. Those three broad kind of conceptual ways of standing out is being something new or innovative, doing something that’s different or creative or doing something that’s really relevant to your target audiences. Does that make sense?”
Bryan Dulaney, “That makes sense, yeah cool. Yeah and the one of things you guys should know is that, so I had the privilege of working with Re and his team of brilliant people, and he did the work for a client of ours, 7 Figures Sale Training and it was really cool because what we saw as soon as we launched that brand into the world is we began to see the feedback that comes in. So I think when you do a really good job of branding, you start to hear people talking about it and I believe the same is true for you.”
Re Perez, “Yeah and I’m sure you heard the phrase, you know it’s not my definition but I’m sure you heard the phrase of, your brand is what other people are saying when you’re not in the room. And I’m a big advocate of practicing what I preach, so not only do I communicate this or teach our clients that you really want to work on your brand and your perception, I had to do that for our own agencies. Seven years ago when I started BRANDING FOR THE PEOPLE, I was nobody, I was working at some of the top branding firms, working with Fortune 500 brands and I decided that I wanted to work with entrepreneurs and small businesses. And no one really knew who I was and so I needed to create a brand for myself that then modeled and I had some track record and a proof that, wow this works for entrepreneurs, so that I can then teach it to other people.”
“So we did the same exact thing of like looking at how do we need to be perceived among entrepreneurs and small businesses such that branding is relevant to them, such that it is something that’s different than they might have seen or heard of before when they might have heard about branding or it might even be completely new for them because maybe before I started entering into the market place, they’ve never heard of branding. Actually most people think when they’re like, “Hey do branding,” they think, oh you do marketing. And they are two important disciplines in building a business but they are distinct. They’re related, but they’re distinct and so a big part of what I had to do is do a lot of education and inspiration about what branding is and what it’s not and how to apply it. I mean I know I answered your question, I think I was just talking them out loud but I had to do that for ourselves. I don’t know if it’s useful for you to kinda go on like how we did that or what are some of the top things that we’ve used or what we’ve applied to some of our clients and helping them?”
Bryan Dulaney, “Yeah I would say, when you launched your brand, Branding For The People, where did you start? Cause you started from a white space, blank sheet of paper.”
Re Perez, “A blank space. You know, if I may, it’s like so I went through a series of personal life changing events back in 2010, and left a big position at a big firm and I needed to do what most entrepreneurs needed to do when they’re just about to start their business, which is figure out what’s my message, what’s my point of view, what’s my company name gonna be called, what’s my logo, what’s my website and I had to do all of these things. And so, in about six months, I’ve actually went through a really in depth process of kind of looking within and figuring out what’s my purpose, and what’s the impact that I want to make and how do I want to be remembered.”
“So one of the things that I had to do was even just come up with the company name. I could have went with a company name that was abstract, but it would have taken a lot of marketing dollars to build a brand behind an abstract name. So I decided that I needed to go to market with a descriptive name. It’s pretty clear, I do branding and I work with people. So I needed to come up with a name, okay that’s one part. And then the other part is I need to figure out, who’s my target audience, what’s the problem that I’m solving for them and then why should they listen to me. So I needed to look at the who, what and why. Like who am I targeting and what’s their problem and why should they listen to me?”
Bryan Dulaney, “Nice.”
Re Perez, “Yeah, so that’s one piece of it.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Okay, right.”
Re Perez, “And then the other part too is, one of the things that I also had to do is … Listen and you know this is that, there’s a lot of ways that you can build a business online and with great online marketing and that’s important. And if you’re not doing online marketing in today’s economy, then you’re probably not in the game of business. Another pathway or where I started about seven years ago was doing an event. Now everyone is doing events too these days, but I did an event. You basically host an event and you have your own captive audience of people who want to come and learn more about what you have to share or more importantly, they want to come in and help you and have you help them solve their problem. So one way to get instantly noticed with you brand, aside from like logos and colors and we’ll talk about that in a second, but one way that has really helped me is by putting on an event, and speaking.”
“So I would either host my own events, I would speak at events or I would sponsor events. And getting out there in front of large groups of people who you can convey your message really makes a difference. And if you do it right, and if you have a great message and you’re inspiring and people value what you have to say, 10 people will tell five or 10 of their best friends about what happened and it snowballs from there. So if you do something good and of value, people will talk about it. And that goes back to the whole comment of like, your brand is not what you say, it’s what people are saying about you when you’re not in the room.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Right. So yes, so you do a lot of events and that’s how you first launched Branding For The People?”
Re Perez, “That’s Right.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Right? How long did it take to get that snowball effect to show up?”
Re Perez, “Well, I guess it depends on how you measure it, so for me it’s like that was kind of it. So I did an event four months out of the gate, and I had no list in retrospect. I think I had about 200 people on my list and I’m sure 175 of those people were my friends and family, which is probably not the smartest thing to do, but I hustled. And in retrospect, could I have gone and done the path of like building a list and then promote an event? Sure, absolutely. That’s just not how the cards worked out for me. I hustled a bit and I was so committed to putting on an event and bringing in a group of people there, so networked it and asked people to come.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Wow, that’s how it just took off from there really.”
Re Perez, “So it just took off from there, so basically after that. I think I put 50 people in my first event. Those 50 people shared it with like another five to 10 other people and it snowballed from there. So you could say, that’s when I did my first six figures, within six months of being in business, that’s when I did my first six figures, which I don’t know maybe is a benchmark, maybe that’s good, that’s bad but I was getting a lot of attention saying wow, that’s actually pretty good for being fresh out of the gate. And so, it kind of snowballed from there. You could say that the moment I opened up the business, I was so committed to the movement that I was creating that the momentum built, started to build when I said it would. But then tangibly, how it really happened is through an event and then I had another event a few months later, put twice as many people in that event and then you just rinse and repeat and it keeps snowballing from there. Then you add to the mix right? Speaking at someone else’s event.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Right.”
Re Perez, “And then there’s maybe 200 people at that event, or 300 people or 500 people. And you just keep doing that consistently, next thing you know, a couple years in I’m like, wow there’s a lot of people that know who I am, that have hired me, that believe in my message and they know who I am and it goes above and beyond just the ads or the Facebook post that I put out. People have heard of me through that.”
Bryan Dulaney, “So what, and this is another good topic that it kinda flowed from that conversation is, you know you talked about you’re committed right? So what was your vision for your brand?”
Re Perez, “Yeah, so you know little bit lucid at the time but I think all I … There’s a couple different visions. One, I just knew and if you can relate to this, I’ll say it but one actually just wanted to replace my income working for the big firm. So on a very tactical, immediate near term thing, I needed to make money and I knew that I was committed to not working for someone else again, so that was one. Now the longer term vision was I wanted to be able to work with brands that were making some economic and social impact in the world. And I know this, as cliché as it may sound, I’m gonna say it, but I want you to hear it really is like, I really believe that branding is a pathway to change the world. You could change the way people live their lives for the better. So I wanted to work with brands who were making some sort of positive impact in people’s lives and the vision was to help entrepreneurs and small businesses get access to Fortune 500 branding.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Nice.”
Re Perez, “And because it’s so good, it’s so beneficial and they didn’t really have access to it before, so I want to give them access to it so they can then go and make a bigger impact. So at first, first few years, it kind of was like, let me help the leaders, the market leaders, the people who are making a big difference, let me help them through my talent so that my impact in the world goes beyond just the clients that I serve, it’s to the clients of my clients right? So that was kind of the vision, is making a global impact through market leaders.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Nice and I think that’s so important that you mention that because I share the same belief. Then I believe like what I say is I believe your expertise powered by the right system can change the world, and a core driving factor for what I do, the reason why I do what I do with funnels and advertising is because I know that through the experts, we can reach millions of people. I might be able to reach a million but might want to reach a billion people and the way to do that is through other people’s message.”
Re Perez, “That’s right, yeah.”
Bryan Dulaney, “I love the other topic, we’re gonna throw this in here too, kind of throw a spinner on here, is being the brand. Like it’s one thing to get branding done, but then once your branding is epic, cause you clearly can make the brand look just beautiful, look like a seven figure, eight figure company, but then the expert needs to step into that role right?”
Re Perez, “Yea that’s true.”
Bryan Dulaney, “And so, tell us a little bit about your experience about helping people to step in and be the brand.”
Re Perez, “You know, I’m so glad you brought that up Bryan. This is I think one of the reasons why we connect too because I mean listen, a branding agency or a brander can give you like the best branding, the best positioning, the best messaging, but if you are not willing to step up to what that vision is, then it falls flat, it falls short. Now a good brand in my mind, a good vision and aspirational brand should give you something to step into, but where the magic happens is that you become one and one with the brand. It’s not just, there’s you and then there’s your brand. It’s like you just are your brand. Like you don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Hey am I a man today right? Or do i have blue eyes?” It might … Am I a person blue eyes? Just using some tact here. You don’t think about that, you just are.”
“And so, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs and small businesses that they can have the best branding, but if they don’t become aligned with their brand, that registers to your prospects and targets as inconsistent, that it registers as inauthentic. You might come across as being a fraud. There’s something consciously or subconsciously that people say, “Oh that’s not exactly who that person is.” You know it’s the idea of like, renting out the most expensive cars and doing a photo shoot saying like, hey look at how much money I’m making and you’re still struggling. That’s so inauthentic and people see right through that.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Yeah. So what about some tangible ways that people can step into their brand cause you know the work that you do, you position them as seven and eight figure brands right? And many times, it’s an eight figure brand. And so you’re like, okay this is beautiful, this is like, they’re crushing it, seven and eight’s crushing it, but it’s like how do you help them to step, how do you fill that gap because they might not be at an eight figure lifestyle yet?”
Re Perez, “Well you know, I wish I could say that there’s like a one, two, three kind of process or methodology. In my mind, branding is a lifestyle, it is a complete transformational shift and it’s non-linear. Okay that being said, there could be some steps or some phases to help close that gap. One is, getting clear on who you are and who you’re not.”
Bryan Dulaney, “That’s good.”
Re Perez, “So all the way down from your value systems to your point of view, to your personality, like be really clear who you are and who you’re not. That’s like a whole phase of itself. Number two is to be consistent with that message. It would be inauthentic if Oprah came out and started swearing like Gary Vaynerchuk right? It would be completely inauthentic for her. So the second thing is to be consistent with that which you say you are and that which would you say is like who you are. So be consistent with that, so your actions are always lined up with that.”
“And then three, I’ll say is being a great listener to your target audiences. What do I mean by that? Is a great brand in my mind listens to their target audiences. So getting some market intel and getting some feedback from the very people that you’re communicating to to say, “Hey if what I’m saying and who am I, is that resonating with you? Because you’re my target audience, is that resonating with you or this is the perception that I’m trying to create.” Remember I said earlier, a brand is about creating a desire of perception. Is the perception that I’m trying to convey, is that what is exactly landing out there for you?”
Bryan Dulaney, “Now how would you do that tactically?”
Re Perez, “You know to be honest, it really is through a conversation. I could tell you that there’s a whole … You know you could do the approach of surveying people through a questionnaire and codifying all the information gathered from that, but I found that the best way at least for an entrepreneur or small business, whether you’re bootstrapping it or whether you’re in the early stages or even if you’re a bit more advance is actually having conversations with people, particularly your ideal clients.”
“On another tactical level within that is like, so just having a conversation, what are some of the things that are most important to you? Asking your target audience, what are some of the things that are most important to you? Could be a list of ten things or five things. The next question to ask in that conversation is, oh okay … Well, I’m sorry, let me clarify. What are the things that are most important to you in the context of hiring someone like me. So I’ll just use me as an example. What are the five to 10 things that are most important to you in working with a branding agency or working with a branding expert or a marketing expert or a coach or whatever that product or service is that you’re offering, what’s most important to you?”
“The second layer is, how well perception wise do you think I’m performing in those areas. So let me unpack that a bit. So if you’re asking these two sets of questions, what’s important to them, and how well do they think that their perception that you’re doing in those areas, you can identify four pieces of information. If it’s really important to them and you’re doing really well in that area, continue doing that. If it’s really important to them, you’re not doing really well, that’s an opportunity for action. And if it’s something that’s not important to them and you are doing really well at it, okay that’s awesome, you’re doing really good at it but it’s not really important to them, so there’s no ROI for you that. And then the fourth bucket is, you’re not doing really well at it and it’s not important to them so it’s something to ignore. So anyway, just to flush out the things, so that’s an important or my recommended approach to having a qualitative interview, a one on one interview with some and asking a set of questions to be able to take some insights and take some action with it. Does that make sense?”
Bryan Dulaney, “Yeah, it makes sense, cool.”
Re Perez, “I’m trained as a consultant, so sometimes I think in terms of these language so please feel free to interrupt me if it’s unclear.”
Bryan Dulaney, “No, that’s good. Now here’s a good question for you. So out of all the branding or all the brands that you’ve done, what are your top favorite three clients?”
Re Perez, “Oh, you’re gonna put me on the spot.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Like and why? Or, like a few that stand out, like the ones that you really love and why?”
Re Perez, “Oh, well my clients are watching this. Either you’re gonna be really happy or you’re gonna be really pissed. Okay so how about this, if you give me the liberty to say like, there’s top five, there’s five that I can reference that I really appreciate and so grateful to have been part of their journey for different reasons. So Jeremy Miner of 7 Figure Sales Training is one example, who from the get go … Cause everyone says, well I think I should build my business first and then work on branding. That could work, I’m not gonna lie. That could be one pathway, but Jeremy was very committed to really coming out of the gate, because he knew that his approach and his philosophy around sales was so distinct from what is out there in the market and he wanted to have a premium brand. So hand in hand with great branding, great marketing and a great business model and a philosophy, he was able to come out of the gate with a big bang and it looks like an high end premium brand, that’s also approachable. So I very much admire what Jeremy has done.”
“Maria Andros who is a business coach and a video marketing expert. That’s a little bit more of, I appreciated what she’s done because she really brought on, we really brought on this whole luxury brand appeal to her branding. That’s, talk about being innovative, that so wasn’t done in the coaching space. And now there’s a lot of coaches and coaching experts who are trying to have like a high end premium luxury type brand. A third example is our good friend Nick Unsworth of Life on Fire. Now this one, while I could talk about the visuals and so forth and the logo and the story behind that, if you check out lifeonfire.com, what I love about Nick though is that talk about being the brand, Nick just became Life on Fire. Like he is synonymous with that, the philosophy of living a life on fire and he is someone who just really took the brand and owned it as his own. I gave him the tools and he was able to run with it and build great marketing, build community, build a tribe, all that sort of stuff and that’s a great example that’s why I look to him for that.”
“Suzanne Evans, Hell Yeah Inc and just everything she’s done and I think I said I was gonna give a fifth example. I will tell you, there’s one example that I really like, it’s Kaikini Bikinis. So a totally non service base but a Hawaiian bikini clothing brand, I thought that was kind of cool. And I liked it just because she was willing to push the envelope with creativity and design and positioning and so forth. So I love all my clients that being said if you’re watching, I love all my clients, but for different reasons. You know here’s the thing, I’ll say it and you didn’t quite ask me this one but the theme across all of those brands is that they were committed to being the best in their industry. They were committed to being a market leader and they were committed to doing something unique and different that they’re not another me too brand, they wanted to come out and be their own brand.”
Bryan Dulaney, “That’s on point, yeah. I think that’s a common trait throughout all your clients. They just get it that they want to be the best and they want to be a market leader and they just want went out coming out strong.”
Re Perez, “Yea.”
Bryan Dulaney, “So as we wrap up, what are some of the things that we’ve missed? Sort of like some secrets that they should really know about branding and how to like just really be noticed. What I’m looking for is like, I want to be instantaneous, I want to stand out, you know what I mean? Like that’s what instantly notices, like it catches your eye right away, you know what I mean?”
Re Perez, “Well okay, so how about this? I want to respond to that and then what I want to also do is maybe even just kind of bulletize them for you because if there is anything that you get from this conversation, is I want you to be able to have a very succinct approach because if we can summarize it for you, you most likely remember it and you’ll most likely take action with it, but just in response to that last piece of it is, visuals do matter. So when you talk about being instantly noticed, subconsciously and consciously, people notice little things like how your hair is fixed or not. The clothes that you’re wearing. The watch that you have and this is not to sound materialistic by any stretch of imagination, cause it’s not about that. It’s about being mindful of how you show up, whatever your expression is.”
“Steve Jobs showed up in a black turtleneck and jeans, that was consistent with his brand. So it’s not about buying luxury clothes and outfits, it’s not about that, it’s about being mindful of how you need to show up visually from your own attire to how you show up online to your website to how you show up on your Facebook and your Twitter. So visuals are a big part of influencing perception, so that’s one. But then just to round it out with everything else that I’m saying, what I want to leave you with is if you remember that in terms of how to get instantly noticed, what I’m suggesting here is, get our there. Have an event, speak at events, attend events. So having a physical presence and get out there because that is one way to get instantly noticed.”
“Number two, while you’re out there, make sure you’re mindful of how you show up visually. Cause people pay attention to it and if that’s your only interaction with them at that one event, people will remember you how you showed up at that particular event, not how you showed up the following week when you’re not at that event, they’ll remember you at that event. The third thing is that whatever you do, make sure that you do it from a place of authenticity and integrity and that you’re genuine and real that it’s consistent with who you say you are. But more importantly, could you do something that is unique or innovative or different in the marketplace or within your category. So hopefully that summarizes it for you, there’s a lot more. I can talk all day long about this and give tons of other tips, but if anything, when I do these types of interviews, I really want to make sure that people are able to be left with top three or even if just one. There’s one thing that you heard from this entire presentation, take that and run with it.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Okay Re, so thank you so much for all that wisdom.”
Re Perez, “Yeah, my pleasure.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Loved it, thank you so much. Where can they learn more about what you do and what’s going on in your world?”
Re Perez, “Yeah, you know to keep it simple, it’s just brandingforthepeople.com. It’s branding, F, for, F-O-R, not the number four, brandingforthepeople.com. Subscribe to our list, you can always unsubscribe at any time, but sign up for our list, we give lots of great free content, we give a list of some of the upcoming events, some of the exciting events that we’re a part of that we love to promote, some of our colleagues and partners that are putting on great things and we curate all of those. It’s not like we’re just promoting anything, we curate a lot of our relationships, so brandingforthepeople.com. If you’re interested in talking to our team, sign up on our lists, schedule a call. But heres the thing I would want to make sure is, if you do that, that’s awesome and if you reach out to our team, make sure you mention this guy’s name. Make sure you mention Bryan Dulaney and this interview because then we could connect the conversation and we can make sure we can give a huge shout out.”
Bryan Dulaney, “Yeah and I mean I just gotta give you a shout out too because I’ve been to two of Re’s branding workshops.”
Re Perez, “We try to kick him out but it didn’t quite work out.”
Bryan Dulaney, “So be sure to check that out because it was a great time, spend a couple days together working on our brand, one of our brands and then the 7 figure sales training brand, worked on that as well. And obviously that came out beautifully.”
Re Perez, “Thank you.”