This Episode

Mark Stephenson & Marc Vila

You Will Learn

  • How to make your brand stand out from the crowd
  • How to build trust in your brand
  • How to make people want to do business with you

Resources & Links

Episode 180 – Make a Brand That Stands Out

Show Notes

How To Make Your Brand Stand Out

There are tons of t-shirts shops, sign shops, restaurants and insurance companies everywhere. The world is a busy place. How do you make YOUR brand stand out? How does something emerge amongst the noise?

If you want to learn about standing out, watch some nature documentaries. You can see how birds spread their wings, sing or flash bright colors.
It’s not just about standing out though, it’s about building an audience, and trust and a desire to do business with YOU and YOUR COMPANY.

Be Original / You – Pick a style or a theme that fits your niche, personality.

Be Sincere – this brand should be sincere. If you are fake or try to be someone you aren’t, people will pick up on it.

Tell a story – share the dream of your business, your personal dream.

Be consistent – stick with ideas, colors, styles, etc. Don’t try to be business professional on your website, then be quirky and cool on social media. Make sure it all ties together.

Action Items – Suggestions

Get celebrities / Influencers – Know local celebrities? Even “mini celebrities” like the local high school football coach, or the leading home run hitter in the high school baseball team, or the owners of popular businesses. If you can get their endorsements it helps.

  • Who do you know that’s in a position to influence a lot of people?
    • Preacher
    • Teacher
    • Local Politician
    • News anchor
    • Radio host
    • Entertainer

Pay to get your name out there – if your brand supports children, be a sponsor of a local children’s event. if your brand has to do with local sports, give away a bunch of free hats to kids. Use social media to share big stories, even with boosted or paid ads.

  • Make a list of online or local “happenings” /events that could relate to your brand
  • Find out the best way to participate in these sympathetic-to-brand events
  • Rent a table
  • Advertise in flyer
  • Buy time or space

Hire someone to help you brand – if you aren’t a graphic artist or a branding expert, find someone who is and get them to help with your style: Fonts, logos, colors, etc.

  • PR firm/person
  • PPC expert
  • Marketing company
  • Web developer
  • Social media pro
  • Transcript

    Mark Stephenson:
    Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 180, I can’t believe it, of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. This is Mark Stephenson.

    Marc Vila:
    Wow, 180 episodes.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I know, makes me feel young.

    Marc Vila:
    Yes. A century and an octogenarian combined to-

    Mark Stephenson:
    Wow.

    Marc Vila:
    Wonderful.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Party at the old folks home.

    Marc Vila:
    Today, we’re here to talk about making a brand that stands out.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Marc is well aware of how I feel about branding and then I’m enthusiastic about it and think it’s an amazing idea. And that was sarcasm. But I think that when you are first starting out and you have this opportunity to cement the message and make sure that everything that you do supports that, I think it’s a fantastic idea. And that’s basically what branding is.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. I mean, what we’re really talking about is, when you look at particular companies and you try to define what’s their personality, who are they, if you can personify or describe a company, how would you describe them? One that just came to mind is Geico Insurance.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yep.

    Marc Vila:
    So they sell insurance. It’s really boring and everybody pretty much hates it. So how do you take a product like that and make people like it?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    Their whole thing is, their brand is centered around messaging that is light, uplifting, makes light and uplifting of this boring product. So they have cavemen, they have the get-go, and they have all these other things that they do. There’s dancing in their commercials. And then they always push on, “You can save money. We have great customer service. We’re fun.”

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    That’s their brand.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yes.

    Marc Vila:
    Their brand is, “We’re a good value. We’re fun to work with. And we’re going to take care of you.” That’s their brand. And you don’t need to be an expert on branding to have come to that conclusion about Geico.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    So that’s what we’re talking about with branding. On the completely different spectrum of it, if we’re talking about a t-shirt company, your t-shirt company might have a very specific look and feel to it. It might be very feminine and pink and blingy and lighthearted. It may be very metal and grungy and dark. This is kind of a representation of who your company is and the people that will relate to that company and want to do business with you.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. I think, actually, we touch on this in a lot of our different podcasts about how you need to make your company should, to a certain extent, match your personality. It should tell your own story. So maybe if you don’t have a brand yet or you’re thinking about it, a good exercise to go through would just write words that you would want to associate with your t-shirt company.

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Do want a company that’s friendly? Do you want a company that is polite? Do you want a company that is over serviced, like you’re super into customer service? Do you want a company that’s really quiet and professional? Assign those words to your company and that will help you develop a great brand.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. And that’s what it is. When you think about this stuff, I would go down the descriptive rabbit hole. Right? So you may think-

    Mark Stephenson:
    Wait. Wait.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Do you mean the easily entered long, dark, and yet somehow warm and comforting rabbit hole that goes on for a long time and has many features that you would want to just talk about inside?

    Marc Vila:
    I’m talking about doing a bunch of drugs and watching Alice in Wonderland.

    Mark Stephenson:
    So was I.

    Marc Vila:
    Oh, okay.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Wonder you should say that.

    Marc Vila:
    No. Yes, all of that.

    Mark Stephenson:
    But that’s the description rabbit hole right there. That’s what we’re talking about.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah, no, that’s exactly… No, you’re so true that you want to describe the business in more than just surface words. Right? So typically, if you talk to a business owner, they may describe, “I own a business. I make a custom apparel and promotional goods for local small businesses. I deal with a lot of lawyers and marketing companies and dentist office and stuff like that.” So you may describe your business as professional and reliable, which are just quite simply the easy answers.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    Or if you’re going to deal with lawyers and dentists, you need to be professional and you need to be reliable, but you want to go deeper than that if you can. You want to have a better description of your company and how you represent yourself. You may use words that don’t describe your company, but describe an overall look and feel of you, your business, who’s going to represent your business. So you may just use words like healthy and fitness and fit to also describe your professional business.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    You may use words like clean cut, so you could be professional and not necessarily clean cut. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    So you want to just dive down that rabbit hole and use a lot of words to describe your business. Once you’ve kind described you and your business and the personality, then we can go through all the different things we have on our list here about building a brand that stands out.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. You know what? I would like to take a little sideline here because I had an experience with branding yesterday.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay. Okay.

    Mark Stephenson:
    There may or may not be a side hustle company that I do marketing from. I started it years ago based on education, it’s Owner Marketing School. I developed a few courses that I put on Udemy and other places. I worked with businesses in the past to develop webinars and things like that. But I really haven’t done that in a long time, and it’s more devoted now to helping people with websites and stuff like that, not in this industry.

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I had the conversation with somebody last night, and they were confused between what I was talking to them about, which was doing things like managing paid ads, recreating their website, versus the image that was presented on like, “I thought you did your school. I thought you did this, and now we’re talking about this.” So there was a disconnect in a brand I didn’t even consider, like I hadn’t even thought about it.

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    So I think that this kind of branding conversation is really important. And if you’ve been in this business for a while and you started out as Susie side hustle with a Cricut doing craft items on the weekends, and now you are doing sports apparel for local schools and you’re selling gifts to local boutique shops. Now you’ve got a different brand, and there should be different words to describe your business. And you should give some thought to that as well.

    Marc Vila:
    Sure. That’s great. And you make a case that’s worthy of bringing up on what it means to have a brand and why you should know what it is, and then we’ll talk about making it stand out. But there’s a thing just in general that shows up in marketing when you’re talking about websites, when you’re talking about branding, just in general. And that’s, you want to avoid confusion, you don’t want people to feel confused. And that doesn’t mean that you wrote out your pricing structure in a way that wasn’t easy to understand.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    It kind of means that you don’t feel like you’re in the same place. You feel like you potentially could be lost or you feel like you could be deceived. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah, that’s true.

    Marc Vila:
    When you walk into somebody’s house, who has a nice decorated house, you walk into the foyer. Foyer, foyer?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yes, either one of those terms.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. And they have crystal and white and light-colored flooring, bright and nice chandelier. And then you walk into the kitchen, and you see dark countertops and red flooring and blue walls. And then you go into one of the bedrooms, and you see bright pink walls and shag carpet. What would your opinion be of that person?

    Mark Stephenson:
    That they have just gotten off the phone with one of the home remodeling shows.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay. Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I wrecked my house.

    Marc Vila:
    You would leave that party and lean over to your partner and be like, “That was weird.”

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    I’m not sure I want to go there again. And by the way, she wanted us to invest money in her business. No.

    Mark Stephenson:
    No. Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    No, you’d almost deny it right off of that because there was such confusion in this house that it makes you feel uncomfortable and it also makes you not trust the person as well. You don’t trust that they… You feel like something is wrong because that doesn’t feel right.

    Mark Stephenson:
    That’s really interesting if you’ve ever traveled outside the United States and you go into a US food chain, the differences are unsettling. I went to Canada years ago and I went into, I think it was a McDonald’s, and they offered pizza. It didn’t match the brand for me.

    Marc Vila:
    Right.

    Mark Stephenson:
    It’s very confusing. It’s like going into a Kentucky Fried Chicken and they’re just offering something completely different, like there’s white tablecloth service in the back room at Kentucky Fried Chicken. It just doesn’t match. And that kind of discordance and what you understand and what you see and hear will definitely put somebody on the alert and make them less comfortable in doing business with you.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So those are different levels of branding. In fact, I mean, the thing that you mentioned would be, some people think that if you mentioned pizza from McDonald’s, they might turn their head up like that sounds gross.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    But if you really think about it-

    Mark Stephenson:
    It makes sense.

    Marc Vila:
    What’s the difference between the hamburger and pizza? It’s bread and sauce and meat. Are they really such a realm that it would sound disgusting? But people would be disgusted by that idea because it’s such off of the brand that you expect to see McDonald’s. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yep.

    Marc Vila:
    It’s weird.

    Mark Stephenson:
    And I’ll just throw in that I went into a Subway near ColDesi. One day, they had a pizza station set up, and it was just super confusing.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    There’s no reason for it to be one of those. It was very confusing.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. I mean they make bread there.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Anyway, if you have a t-shirt brand, don’t sell pizza.

    Marc Vila:
    Unless that is your brand.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Unless you sell pizza shirts.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. I mean there’s pizza and t-shirts. That could be a thing.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I like that.

    Marc Vila:
    Actually, that’s a great idea. Free. You can have that idea out there, and I do not expect anything in return. And if you make a million bucks from it, just give me a shout out.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. There you go. And send me a check, just all the credit.

    Marc Vila:
    Anyway, what we’re talking about here is, I think we’ve gotten a point across in what a brand is and why it’s important to define it and why it actually matters for your business. Now we want to talk about how to build your brand to stand out. There are hundreds of restaurants and hundreds of lawyers and hundreds of everything. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    There’s a ton of noise out there, and you are starting up a promotion shop or a t-shirt shop or a sign company or some customization business. How do you stand out amongst all of the other ones? And maybe not just that, but amongst all the other decisions that people could make besides buying what you sell, because they could buy t-shirts or they could buy pens for their employees or they can buy blankets off Amazon. Why do they lean towards you? And part of it is the branding that you put together, and standing out a little bit so you capture not everybody’s attention because you’re not Coca-Cola but the attention of the people that you would like to buy from you. That sounded like I was going to say more, but that was the end of it. Capture the type of people that would buy from you.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah, I get it. I think I get your point. What you’re doing when you create your branding is, you are letting your tribe know, not the whole country, just your tribe know who you are and what you do, so they recognize you and will buy from you.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    So if you describe who you are with those words, what your business is, with the words that we talked about, you’ll see that’s your customer written down on paper because that’s who you’re going to appeal to. So you may as well embrace that throughout the steps that we’re going to talk about.

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm. Yeah. Great. Great. So if you’re not sure who your customer is, this could be a good time to listen to other episodes or make sure you go back and listen to about… Just search the word niche. That’s going to show up a bunch of different episodes. But try to pick who your customer is, and that’ll help you define who your brand might want to be too.

    Mark Stephenson:
    There you go.

    Marc Vila:
    If you don’t know who your customer is and you know what your brand is already, well then that will help you pick your niche. So it’s a chicken and egg thing.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I like it.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay. So we have four things and then some suggestions, ideas, tips. So the first thing that we’ll talk about is, be original. Be original.

    Mark Stephenson:
    And I would adjust that a little bit based on what we’ve been talking about.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay.

    Mark Stephenson:
    And I would just say, be you.

    Marc Vila:
    Be you. Okay.

    Mark Stephenson:
    You know what I mean? Be original. Original might be somebody that wears a banana-colored suit and a red hat wherever they go. And that’s how they get noticed because –

    Marc Vila:
    Well, I would say this, Mark, to go deep on you. You and everybody listening are original.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    Everybody’s original. There are no two of the same people. Everyone’s different in their own way. So being you is being original. Trying to be just like everybody else is what’s not going to capture any attention.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. Or I guess I was just trying to put across, don’t be original in a way that’s not what you’re going to say next, in a way that’s not genuine.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Don’t pick something that’s not you just because it sounds super unique.

    Marc Vila:
    Right.

    Mark Stephenson:
    If it doesn’t match-

    Marc Vila:
    Yes. So in this exercise, you’re going to listen to all four things before you make a decision.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yes, all four.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay.

    Mark Stephenson:
    And we’re going to try to only talk about one at a time.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay. The first one is just being original. So you want to pick a style or a theme or a branding messaging, and you can do this with a bit of word cloud. And what I mean by that is, it could be a written exercise where you write the most important words biggest and the less important words smallest, and you write them real close together. And then when you look at it, that’s kind of a definition of your brand. You pick a style that kind of fits your niche, it fits your personality. And that will make it stand out. So what I mean by that is, if you have a particular niche that you work with, you specifically are dealing with… And I’ll pick some easy ones, just because it’s easy to make an exaggerated example.

    But the one that’s been in my head today is like metal music. So your niche is people into heavy metal music, loud music, concerts. That’s your niche. That’s the group of people that you sell to. It could be schools to go with something a little bit lighter. Your niche is, you’re doing stuff centered around elementary schools and middle schools and their students and everything that goes around that. Your niche very well could be, as I mentioned before, dentists and lawyers, which I may redefine as educated small business owners. So now that you have a niche, you want to make sure that the personality of your business stands out to those people, which will make your business look original in the crowd of all of the other businesses.

    And just to finish this thought, then I’ll let you speak, Mark. But the thought is that you are dealing with schools, and somebody is out there in elementary school, they’re a teacher and they’re having an event at school, and they want to buy t-shirts and mugs for this event. And they go to local Google search, Google maps, and they type in t-shirt shop. They see one that’s got a baseball bat in the logo. They see another one that looks just a simple, plain flat logo in blue. And then they see one that’s got a book in it. Right there, that stands out to them. That’s original to them because they’re a school. They want to do stuff for a school. They see a logo or a company that feels like a school. And boom, you’re original. In all these other logos out there, yours stands out to your niche. I’ll let you comment on that.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I have two things to say about that.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay.

    Mark Stephenson:
    First of all, I’m dying to know, that book logo, is it navy blue or royal blue?

    Marc Vila:
    All right. I’ll let you know at the end of the podcast.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Okay. And I just very quickly Googled headbanger tees.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay.

    Mark Stephenson:
    And apparently, that brand has not been taken.

    Marc Vila:
    Oh, wow.

    Mark Stephenson:
    So I’ll say this, Marc Vila’s example was great. That elementary school teacher is probably not going to look for their t-shirts at headbanger tees.

    Marc Vila:
    Right.

    Mark Stephenson:
    So if you’ve got the heavy metal persona, that’s a customer you’re just not going to attract unless she’s secretly a head banger, but then she’s part of your tribe anyway.

    Marc Vila:
    Right. And that’s getting into niche. And I think that’s the point of it, is that you should want to be original to a degree. You want to stand out amongst the crowd and specifically you want to stand out amongst the niche of people that you’re working with.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    That’s a degree of being original. Now, further from that, that’s a little bit into niche defining in your brand, but also, there are going to be a bunch of other places out there potentially that are going to want to sell to schools. So a website example, you could have one where you… And I bet this is true if you go around it. If you look up places that search that provides school apparel, you’re probably going to find a bunch of websites with a bunch of pictures of students and teachers. They’re all going to be wearing matching that are probably simple and plain. And they’re going to say,” About us, order here, et cetera.”

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yep.

    Marc Vila:
    Well, do you stand out? How do you make your brand stand out when there’s other ones like that? You add personality to that brand. So potentially, your website looks more like a classroom. Potentially, you’re using icons that are books and pencils and things that have to do with classrooms. You’re really taking your niche and your brand, and you’re adding more and more to it. So when somebody goes there, it now stands out. So now you stand out not only to your niche, but you stand out amongst your niche.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. That’s a great point. I like that.

    Marc Vila:
    I think it’s two things there. Anything else that you would’ve liked to add about being original or being you?

    Mark Stephenson:
    No.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay. So what’s next then? You alluded to it.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Next is just being sincere, because it will come through eventually. Make sure that the brand that you pick, the branding that you pick matches who you are. It’s one thing to make a strategic decision, “I’m going to go into any business. I’m going to go into schools or a good market. So I’m going to pick schools as my market. Elementary schools, there’s a lot of them and the moms buy a lot of stuff. I’m going to pick elementary schools, and I’m going to sell them t-shirts,” versus, “I love to sell to elementary schools and I got that education brand because I used to be a teacher,” or, “My mom was a teacher. I grew up around teachers,” or, “I had a traumatic experience as a child on a field trip because I didn’t have a matching t-shirt with the rest of…” Whatever it is, there has to be some kind of thread of sincerity in that brand that you pick. You’re not just coming up with an original idea, you’re being sincere throughout the brand development.

    Marc Vila:
    Yes. So being sincere is, if you… Eventually, if you’re trying to sell somebody something and pretend, in general-

    Mark Stephenson:
    In general.

    Marc Vila:
    In general, you’re trying to pretend, eventually people figure out that you’re trying to pretend, and they don’t like it.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    And I think that’s very, very broad.

    Mark Stephenson:
    That’s not saying that they won’t buy from you anyway.

    Marc Vila:
    Right.

    Mark Stephenson:
    There are tons of people out there that are just in a business that they fell into or they stumbled on a niche that turned out to be popular, but I think you’ll be more successful faster and more satisfied with the business as a whole if everything kind of works with you and who you are and what you want to accomplish.

    Marc Vila:
    Right. Right. Right. This not only helps develop just some passion in the business itself, but it makes it easier for you to do marketing and branding and write for it and everything like that. So if you can identify with the niche and you know how to write for it, you know how to be a personality for it, you know how to train employees, you know how to hire the right people because they’re also fit the brand and fit the personality and all that stuff, then just in general, you’ll be more satisfied with the business. But also, a lot of small business owners and small to medium-size business owners directly are interacting with customers at some point in time, them or their family, or somebody really close to them, a friend. And if that’s the case with your business, if you’re going to directly be interacting with customers yourself and your staff, yourself, then really being sincere to your brand is going to just make things a whole lot easier for you.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I got to say I’m a little disappointed in myself that I didn’t use ColDesi as an example right off the bat.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay. Do it.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Because ColDesi has this brand of education and support. We go out of our way, including with this podcast, to help just beyond choosing equipment and just beyond selling a piece of equipment. And that’s why we use the Achieving Dreams tagline in our brand. And it’s not just a tagline. If you talk to the guy that started it, it’ll take you about 10 minutes to figure out that he will do anything to help you be successful. It’s an original brand, an original approach. It’s sincere, and it’s based on this guy that started the company. So whatever thread there is about how we go out of the way to ensure people are more successful than they would be otherwise, whether it’s from choosing the right equipment or education or good training or whatever it is, that all stems from that native state that he’s looking for the opportunity to help people do stuff. And it comes through. So that’s a really good example of a brand that’s original. It fits that person. It’s very sincere.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. So overall, and specifically I think, going back to it a little bit, when you’re interacting with your customers and you’re hiring people that you understand who they are because they are like you in this sincere way, then you build a tribe of customers and you build a tribe of employees that all work together, similar goal, similar style, similar niche. It really helps to drive success in business. A lot of times, if you know small business owners or if you’ve interacted with a small business that has a good niche and you go meet people in the staff, you can tell that they’re part of the similar family.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    You can absolutely tell. A friend of mine worked for a small coffee company for a little while. They did coffee and beer and beer. They were a very hipster, cool, interesting.

    Mark Stephenson:
    What?

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah, yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Coffee and beer place being hipster?

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. They all had mustaches with… You know?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Ugh.

    Marc Vila:
    But I mean, that was their brand. They hired people that were like that. The whole place was built like that. It was very cool, and they attracted a lot of people who thought that was interesting and cool. The music that they had in there, you’d go in there and you may be hearing music from a pop music from the ’50s and ’60s, very retro sounding place. And why were they playing this music and then next they were playing some new age music? It’s because that is the hip. That was the hip cool vibe of the place. It was like, “We’re playing this because it’s good. Don’t you like good stuff? That’s why you’re here. Because you have good coffee and good beer.”

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    And I just thought that that’s a really good example of how a small business… If you’re going to do something with bling and you’re doing girls’ bling pink, bright, bubbly, I mean if that’s you and that’s who you’re selling to, then you need to make sure that your business looks like that too in an original and interesting way and in an honest way.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. I like all that.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. So we have another one down the line here, which is telling a story.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. I think there’s a bunch of books about the story brand and things like that. And you’re welcome to dive into it. But I think just any opportunity that you have to tell your story, either in one place or throughout your website. There are a lot of people who sell custom apparel.

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm.

    Mark Stephenson:
    And there are a lot of them that do really well. But the way that a lot of them stand out is because… Well, let me start over. You’ve got a lot of competition. People aren’t going to necessarily buy from you because of the quality of the t-shirt that you pick or even that you can design a graphic better than anybody else on the planet. They’re going to buy from you because of who you are, because of how you represent yourself. Marc and I talk to one of our listeners who was starting a custom t-shirt business. She had a website, and she didn’t know why people weren’t buying things from her. It was her artwork put on the t-shirt.

    Marc Vila:
    Oh yeah, I remember.

    Mark Stephenson:
    It was her artwork, but it didn’t say that anywhere. So we talked to her and what she’s passionate about and things like that. And it turns out she traveled the world, creating art all over the world. She brought it back and she put that on a t-shirt. She continues to create things like that. And it’s for people that travel and it’s for other artists. I want to buy that. I want to buy something from her. The art on a t-shirt is not my jam. That’s not a big thing. I want to buy something from this lady that traveled around the world and did art and then came back and put it on a t-shirt. That’s a story.

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    She was an art teacher, or whatever that story is, you got to put it into the site.

    Marc Vila:
    Right. And the story could be very personal, meaning it could be you.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yep.

    Marc Vila:
    I joined the army and then I got out of the army, and I wanted to start a business to do stuff for children because I had a lot of friends that were really into that who are family men. I also want to help veterans because a lot of my friends are veterans, and I understand the plight that they go through too. I want to focus around family and veterans. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    That’s the business that you’re trying to build. It’s very sincere to you. And that’s your story. It’s a great story to tell. Now, further from that, maybe the story of you is not that interesting, but the story of your business is, meaning that maybe you were never in the military, but you had a cousin who was a really close friend, who maybe passed away, who was in the military. And you feel a lot for that. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    Maybe your story is not that interesting or worth telling, maybe it is, but also, you create the business that’s about helping the families of people who gave the biggest gift. And that’s kind of the brand that you have. So you build a company, you build a brand, and you tell about the story of what the company is for. So this company is for, “I’m selling t-shirts and I donate money to here,” or, “I’m selling t-shirts that help build awareness,” or whatever you’re feeling. It doesn’t have to always be charity involved or anything like that, but there should be a story and something fun behind it or something interesting behind it or heartfelt or whatever it is. But if it’s-

    Mark Stephenson:
    Relatable.

    Marc Vila:
    Relatable. So it could be you, if you have a good story to tell or you want to be a part of it or the business. But either way, there should be some sort of a story behind it on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. Hey, if you’re a nurse and you bought a DTG printer to make t-shirts so you could eventually stop being a nurse and go become a farmer or whatever you want to do, or you’re just looking for a way out of your career right now into your side hustle, then that is a great story to tell too. People are going to relate to it. Say, “Hey, I started this business because I want to be financially independent. This is a great way to do it. I love what I do. I get to be a little bit creative. And so far I’m doing great. I figure another six months of this and I’ll be at replacement income and be able to leave my full-time job.”

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. I mean, whatever the story is. I think when we consider the story of ColDesi, our story has become about the story of the company. But it’s a group of people, it’s a company of people that want to help people achieve their dreams. We want to help people start or grow something that they’ve done before. We want to help people break away from what they’re doing now or break away from the stuck place their business is in now, and do something new and different and interesting and fun because all the equipment and stuff that we sell is about customizing things. And customizing stuff is super cool because everyone loves something that’s custom.

    So we consistently try to tell that story through when we do our videos and we do a little how-to video, but in that how-to video, we’re talking about why you should pick a good t-shirt, or why you should choose art that looks like that. So everything kind of centers around things, how we try to make things easy, how we try to make things so you could be successful, how you should make things so your customers enjoy buying from you.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yep. Yeah. I like it. So the story, I think, is super important, and these points almost kind build on each other.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    You have to be original and be yourself, make sure it’s genuine. You have to be sincere. You’re not making stuff up in order to… You’re making sure you come through. And that story that you tell about yourself or about your brand or about your business includes those things.

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. No, that’s great. And just kind building on itself, we could kind go into the last one, which is to be consistent.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    The story started with that house we walked into and how inconsistent it was and how it made people feel uncomfortable. The same thing has to be with your brand. Actually, the story I told was very extreme. Oftentimes, the inconsistency in branding is small stuff that you think doesn’t matter. And it does actually. It does actually help people feel uncomfortable or comfortable or recognize that it’s you. So your ideas, your colors, your styles, your fonts, wording that you use, even if you typically speak in the third person or you speak in first person, you try to want to make things consistent. So it always feels the same, it looks the same, and it is you and your brand.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. How would you feel about a blue UPS truck?

    Marc Vila:
    Oh, yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Weird.

    Marc Vila:
    You probably wouldn’t even want to sign for the package.

    Mark Stephenson:
    No, I would not.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    You know what I mean? So I really appreciate that kind of consistency. And it doesn’t mean your business can never change, but you’re going to make changes or you’re going to do things differently specifically and on purpose. So you set up these brand guidelines, which is what we’re talking about here, which is a sum of… ColDesi typically uses a Poppins font. We typically use this weight. These are our brand color. So we try to be consistent. It’s okay to stray as long as you’re doing it on purpose. But the more that you stay with these same colors in an ad, the way you talk about your products, the way you talk about your brand, the way you represent yourself, the way a package comes to your customer, the experience when they open up the box, all these things should be emblematic, which is literally what a logo is. It should all be emblematic of your story, of your brand, of your-

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. What I think is amazing about this is, so much of it is maybe not even necessarily very, very conscious. Nobody is going to open up an email from Geico and say, “This font looks weird. I don’t know if I really want to read this email from Geico.” Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    Nobody’s saying that. But, we do like familiarity. As just people in general, we like things that are unfamiliar or not as comfortable as things are familiar. And the more drops of familiarity you put into your branding and keep consistent, the more comfortable and comforting or appealing or whatever positive reinforcing words you want to use, is your brand. That’s how you’re making a brand that stands out, is that you are sticking to these guidelines that always feel the same.

    So you’re using similar fonts. Your webpages all kind of have a similar look and feel to them. I do bold text here and then I do simple text here. I do images here. And you build this familiarity. Your emails have maybe just two or three templates you use. Your website has two or three templates. Even how you decorate t-shirts, if you’re in a t-shirt company. These are a few different styles of how you do it and how you display it on the website. And you’re building this consistent brand to your customers that is not a conscious thing that anybody is ever going to say, “I love when I go to their website that-

    Mark Stephenson:
    Everything looks similar.

    Marc Vila:
    … all the shirts seem to kind of match, even though they’re all different.” Nobody is going to say that, but they’re going to feel really comfortable shopping there.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I’ll give you two examples. And that is, if you will notice, everybody gets spam emails. So if you get an email from your bank or from a trusted provider, even from a car dealership, they all look very similar. Bank of America, always the same format, the same font, and everything. That’s one place where even if the font was weird, I would think that that email was spam.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. You notice.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah, you notice because you get it a lot.

    Marc Vila:
    You notice without knowing why.

    Mark Stephenson:
    The other one is, I think it was a month or two ago, Mark Stephenson has a very predictable brand when he goes into the office.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah, you do.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right?

    Marc Vila:
    You do. Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Everybody knows I wear the Oxford style shirt. I’ve got the company logo. I’ve typically got at least some Dockers on or something like that. I think I showed up with a slightly different kind of shirt and I was wearing jeans and loafers, and both Hannah and Jess were very confused immediately.

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Immediately, it was like, “What’s going on?”

    Marc Vila:
    “I was going to ask for something today, but I don’t know if I want to go talk to him.”

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah, exactly. So it’s a break in the brand.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I even love that small commercial for extending your brand to, if you appear in public, representing your business, that contains your brand message as well. You do it the same way, so when people see you in more than one place, they know who you are, they trust you. Maybe they saw the video on your website and then they meet you in person, you’re wearing the same colors, you’ve got the same kind of shirt, things like that. That consistency works no matter what you’re doing.

    Marc Vila:
    Oh, yeah. I mean, if I imagine seeing all these videos and stuff and then meet me in person and I was a clean shaven, people would be-

    Mark Stephenson:
    I’m so weirded out by the occasional old video of you clean shaven.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. It would be off and it’s become a brand type of thing. A friend of mine, just funny thing, he shaves his head, and he didn’t shave it for a week or 10 days. We just hadn’t hung out. So he invited some folks over to hang out, and he had a little hair all across his head and everyone was like, “What’s going on here? Are you okay? Are you going to tell us some news?”

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    And it’s just because it’s comfort, it’s familiarity. We love that. And on a primal level, things that are unfamiliar give us anxiety. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    If you were to be dropped into a foreign country where they didn’t speak your language, nothing looked the same, and you woke up there, most people would have the highest level of anxiety.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Like Australia.

    Marc Vila:
    Where do I go? They would be freaked out. And which is why when you consider a lot of things, like in retirement communities and homes, they try to keep everything consistent and the same. With babies and raising children, they tell you, schedules are very important. Teachers will say the same thing, “Every Monday, we try to do this. Every Friday, we exit with this because the children like it.” So psychologically, it makes sense across the board. And I think everybody can recognize that. So the way to make your brand stand out is to not only do it in the big ways, but do it in the little ways. Do it in every way you can.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Good summary.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    So let’s talk about some action items or suggestions that people can do to actually help make their brand stand out once they’ve worked all that out.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. This is cool ones. So I’m going to take the first one, just because it’s easy.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    Get some celebrities or influencers to help shout your brand out or be on a video with you or in a picture with you on your website.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Now, Marc, I mean, how many people know Beyonce? I don’t live next door to the Kardashians.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I mean, how do I get it?

    Marc Vila:
    Thousands of people probably know Beyonce. She probably knows thousands of people.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Probably.

    Marc Vila:
    But no, your celebrities can be micro-celebrities, and just get as big as you can achieve. So, a teacher, a middle school teacher is potentially a celebrity to hundreds of people. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    That’s great point.

    Marc Vila:
    They know lots of different students. They know lots of parents. They’re trusted by a lot of people. That’s a level of a celebrity. The principal is a higher level of celebrity. The local football coach for the high school is a degree of a celebrity, the quarterback is. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    So the football-

    Mark Stephenson:
    Let’s define a little bit. When we talk about a celebrity or an influencer, we’re talking about someone that knows or has connections to a lot of people, and people have a reason to listen to what they say.

    Marc Vila:
    And a reason to potentially trust or like them in general, all of that stuff.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    Local business owners, local politicians, pastors, preachers, and then you keep going higher up, news anchor, radio host. I mean, the higher up you can go, the better, but start small. Start with people that are attainable, and it’ll help your brand. Especially if you do school stuff and you can get a picture on graduation day with the quarterback who was kind of a star player all those years and you made some t-shirts for them, and on graduation day, you gave them a graduation t-shirt of some sorts and you put it on and you’d put a picture with them, that’s great for your brand.

    Mark Stephenson:
    That’s pretty cool. Yeah. I like the example that you came up with while we were talking beforehand about the metal band.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay. Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    So if you’ve got head banger tees and you’re in Tampa, there’s a vibrant metal community here in the Tampa Bay area, I’m sure you could meet some of those guys and give them shirts that they would actually wear and appreciate. Maybe they would take pictures with you or mention you during their next gig or allow you to sell the merch.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. Yeah. I mean, stuff like that is, as you get higher, it becomes harder and harder to… Getting a Beyonce to put one of your pieces of apparel on is probably extremely hard. Getting Barack Obama is probably extremely harder. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    But because level of fame is higher, but they’re more valuable the higher they go. So start with achievable.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah, I like that.

    Marc Vila:
    So if you do attorneys and dentists and you have a pretty decent-sized dental company with a good amount of employees and a lot of people know the name in the community, if you can get a picture with him or you can get him to thank you on his website, or even if you can get a quote that you get permission to put on your website from them, that’s a big deal and it really will help your brand. It will help people notice you, to help them trust it more. And it’ll help ingrain that whole feeling that you’re trying to put together, that not only does this brand feel good, but I have an outside influence that I also trust who’s within that brand or feeling of brand or that niche that I also trust that’s reinforcing it.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Good point. Yeah. That’s great. The next way to do that if you want to really get your brand out there is to pay for it. You write somebody a check or you pay to participate in something that’s related to your brand. Right?

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    Mark Stephenson:
    So if you sell children’s apparel, maybe there’s some kind of a local kids’ event, maybe there’s a kids’ run or a summer camp or something like that, that you can participate in, pay a little bit, give away shirts, give away hats or something like that, that will help you brand your product. Once you do that, you can even use social to multiply that brand. Let’s use the kids’ athletic camp as an example. If you participate in the kids’ athletic camp by showing up on the first day and everybody gets their camp t-shirts and camp hats and you donate that. I mean, that is a fantastic social media moment to not only do those kids know your brand, the people that run the camp know your brand, all of those parents know your brand, but you are going to potentially publish pictures of the shirts and your relationship to the camp and follow them along, so everyone that’s connected to those people know your brand as well. That’s a great investment. That’s a big impact for a small little branding event.

    Marc Vila:
    And the chances are, that’s going to get you some business right away.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah, absolutely.

    Marc Vila:
    Right. Especially as you’re a small business where every order matters, every customer matters. You’re in that stage where you only have 10 customers or a hundred customers, and it’s like one or two is a big deal. Doing something like that can have an immediate impact, which is so cool. You could give out those shirts as an example where you’re giving away free shirts. And that day, a parent comes up to you and says, “Oh, thanks for donating these. By the way, I own this type of a company or I work for this company and I think we need new shirts. You do that?” “I do.” You know?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. There you go.

    Marc Vila:
    And then immediately, they just like you. And then they look at your brand and they see that you represent children. Of course, they like children because they have some that they take care of by sending them to a nice little camp thing. And then it all ties together. So I think it’s really great, but you can advertise in a flyer. You can advertise on social media locally, chamber of commerce. I mean, wherever it is, you can buy some space. It will help. And then we have other podcasts where we talk about making a marketing campaign and stuff like that.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    I think that’s worth listening to because all that matters. In this case, I would not recommend you throw money out there without a plan of how it’s going to work and how you’re going to track if it did work. But it’s definitely a way to get your brand out there, especially if it’s a new brand that nobody’s ever heard of before.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I like that.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay. The last one is, you hire somebody to help you do this.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    You may be great at coming up with t-shirt ideas. You may be a great salesperson who can, “Hey, if I get somebody in front of me, I know that they’re going to want to buy promotional goods from me.” Great sales person. You may be well connected. You may just have a passion for graphic design, but maybe you’re not great at graphic arts, which is different, like coming up with a logo and a brand and colors and what fonts would look good together or designing your website. You might not be great at any of that stuff so hire somebody who is, if you want to spend a little bit of money to make it better.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah, I agree. You can take that to the next level by not just hiring somebody to help you with the logo, but hiring someone to help brand your business to the public, to advertise it in more ways. You could hire a PR firm or a PR person for a little help. Their job is basically to get you press. And that might be to get you on a local news show or have somebody do a story about you. It might be to get you featured in a magazine or speak at some kind of a local event. A PR firm or individual that does that for you is basically your classic mouthpiece. They’re looking for ways to do nothing but brand you to the public and to your niche. So that may be something that you want to consider.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. Especially if you’re a local business, there’s probably somebody local who does this stuff locally too. It’s going to be a lot more affordable than if you Google search PR firm and call a company up and they’re just like, “We’re not doing anything unless you’re spending at least a hundred thousand dollars.”

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    If you start your search there, you’re not going to be happy with what you get. But if you start local and you say, “Gosh, I really want to brand my company better. I like to find a couple things. One, somebody to help me figure out how it’s going to look and then somebody who’s going to help me maybe get the word out there.” So you ask around, you look for referrals yourself. You can go to small business association meetings. You can go to wherever it might be. There’s tons of places you can go to try to find people, all types of networking groups like BNI and stuff like that. And then you find somebody local who does what you’re looking for.

    Maybe you don’t even know what you’re looking for, you just want to help get your name out there. So you decide, “Hey, I’m going to go to this chamber of commerce open meeting where I get to meet people. I’m going to go there, and I’m not going to try to sell shirts yet because that’s not the goal of this thing. If I get lucky, I will.” But you just have a short little pitch, “Hey, I have a t-shirt company. My whole thing is veterans,” as the example before, and you kind of tell your little veterans and their families, “I’m really trying to build my brand and get my name out there. I’m just looking for people who do stuff like that.” And then you eventually land the right person. And someone says, “Oh yeah, I met a guy recently the other day, and I think he charges $600 and he will do all of the graphic arts branding for your business.”

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    So he does the logo, all the social media stuff, letterhead, he does the whole thing, business card, all for six or $700, which is affordable for relatively anybody. If you could afford to buy a DTG printer, $600 is not unattainable and might be a good investment for you. Might be. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    I mean, there’s always an argument on why you shouldn’t or shouldn’t spend money on these things. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Sure.

    Marc Vila:
    But these are decisions you can make, and oftentimes it’ll really help you out especially if you’re struggling to find something like this.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah, agreed. When you start opening up the checkbook and looking for somebody to pay to help your brand, then there’s digital advertising experts and marketing companies and web developers and social media pros. Now you’re really in the business marketplace when you’re looking to work with professionals.

    Marc Vila:
    Mm-hmm.

    Mark Stephenson:
    But I like the step in between where maybe that PR guy or PR person actually is willing to do something in kind. He needs shirts for a customer, or maybe there’s something that you can do to support his brand through custom apparel. And in exchange, he supports your brand through what he does for a living.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah. I mean, bartering is one of the oldest commerce ways there are, and it still exists today. I would just say the big thing about, and we’ve probably said this a lot, Mark, and I think we just said it a few minutes ago, but if you’re going to or pay somebody to do something, just the last bit, is you just want to have a plan of what is this, why am I investing this money, and what’s it going to do?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    If your idea is that, “I want to have this super awesome website for schools to be able to order stuff,” first of all, immediately, I just love the idea.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    It’s a good idea, right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah.

    Marc Vila:
    How is anybody going to find it? Okay, so don’t spend 10 grand building a website if you don’t have the money or time or effort to get people to show up.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yes.

    Marc Vila:
    Okay? Don’t spend $3,000 on a branding package from a high-end person that does that. I mean, they name all these cool names they’ve done branding for. Great. How is anybody going to look at it and why are they going to care? So just ask that before you spend some money. Some things are kind of innate, like a business probably should have a logo. Right?

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yep.

    Marc Vila:
    I mean, those are some standard things, but that doesn’t mean you need to spend a ton of money or a ton of time focusing on it.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    Balance, balance.

    Mark Stephenson:
    I think it’s much more important to go back to the beginning of what we were talking about in the podcast and make sure that you’re being original, being sincere, being consistent. Tell your story or tell a story. And I think those are much more important than anything that came after.

    Marc Vila:
    Right. Right.

    Mark Stephenson:
    That’s the business.

    Marc Vila:
    The last three are tips to kind of help, but if you do the first ones and you work off getting word-of-mouth business and you treat people well and you sell a good product for money that’s fair and value, then just all that branding stuff up there is going to keep you on the top of people’s list.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Yeah. I love that. All right, any final parting words there, Marc Vila?

    Marc Vila:
    No. No. I think that if this is the first episode you’ve listened to, if you happen to stumble on us or you just bought some equipment and maybe you saw us in an email, I recommend going back and listening to bunch of other episodes. We’ve been doing content now for, I don’t remember what year we started the podcast.

    Mark Stephenson:
    It’s been a long honk. It’s been 180 hours of actual podcast.

    Marc Vila:
    Yeah, but it’s many years ago and there’s many pieces of content we’ve covered multiple times, but I highly recommend you find a handful of ones that really seem to stick out to you. And definitely, any of the podcasts that talk about niche or sales are some of the ones that are going to have immediate impact on your business. You can a hundred percent listen to one of our podcasts, do something in it, and get business the next day.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Right.

    Marc Vila:
    So you just got to do that stuff.

    Mark Stephenson:
    Okay. I think that’s it then. This has been Mark Stephenson.

    Marc Vila:
    And Marc Vila.

    Mark Stephenson:
    You guys have a great, well-branded, sincere, original, storytelling, consistent kind of a business.

    Marc Vila:
    Wow. How wonderful is that?

    Mark Stephenson:
    It’s good.

     

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