The Best “Branding”

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is The Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure we pay attention to their rules but only so that we can bend them, break them, and rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate. There could be a better future, and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters. Clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive, human evolution and we always will be.

The best branding.

I have to admit that when I was a consultant, I used to cringe when we would go into a branding meeting with one of our companies. But I always enjoyed marketing meetings. Here was the different for me. When we were in the marketing meeting, we were going to talk about things we could measure. When we were in the branding meeting, we were going to talk about a lot of people's opinions. The difference drove me crazy. Branding meetings used to just make me uncomfortable because if you're not selling something, if you're not actually creating a transaction, then you're not getting the best branding. The best branding is to sell a product, but something in a customers hands that they need, that solves one of their problems. Show them something that you do better than anybody else. Help them in a way that no one else can help them but you. Selling someone something that works for them is the absolute best branding that there is. That's not to say that things don't need to look good.

But here's my challenge, far too many entrepreneurs, and if you fallen into this trap, I want you to really think about this. Far too many entrepreneurs focus on their branding before they're actually selling something. Here's the fact, branding will enhance your ability to sell, but branding on its own will not allow you to sell anything. So if you just brand without having a vehicle, it doesn't really matter. You're just making noise. You might gain some attention, but you're not going to gain people, passionate, rabid fans that are following you long term because they've bought from you and you've had an effect in their life. There are some people who can garner attention and just keep doing it. But don't try and be the exception to the rule.

The fact is anyone who sells stuff, gathers a tribe quickly. That's the fastest way to go out there and do it. I look at some of my clients that have incredible branding now, and I think people get confused because they look at really successful people like Natalie Hodson has amazing branding. Her products are incredible. They change people's lives. She has a huge following, massive. She wrote the book Abs, Core, Pelvic Floor with a writing partner, and has changed the lives of tens of thousands of women because they bought from her. She has a seven figure business selling eBooks. That is so ready to explode because she's gathered this massive tribe by having them actually buy from her. That is the best branding there is. You can't through just branding exposure get the same type of connection that you do my actually selling.

Another one of my clients, it's a couple, Lady Boss, Brandon and Kaelin Poulin, they're amazing. They have over 100,000 women that they've helped lose weight by learning to love themselves. It's such an amazing mission and they're such an incredible couple. They're branding today is incredible. They're just adding new product lines right now. They're adding swag and they've got supplements and they've got all ... They've got this incredible tribe that follows everything Kaelin does and she's helping ... Here's why, because she's sold them something and she's transforming their lives because they bought in.

See, one of the things that happens when you sell something to someone, they buy into your tribe. They're not a follower. They're a supporter. They're a financial supporter. There level of commitment to you has changed dramatically. When you look at Natalie's site today, here's what's going to happen, five years from now, I can't tell you how big Natalie's product line is going to be. I don't know how many different types of businesses she and Brandon will be in because they are absolute business prodigies, and it's incredible coaching and watching them. In five years, who knows what that's going to look like, here's what's going to happen, some beginning entrepreneur is going to look at them and say, "Okay. Well, what I need to do to start is to design a product line and a supplement line and this other product line and a swag line and clothing and jewelry. The fact is, all of that started with Brandon and Kaelin selling women a single product. They built their tribe then they sold them other stuff. The people who buy all the things I just told you about are the people who bought from them before. They have built their market by selling to them. It's the way that you can build momentum in a copy forever.

Right now if you're thinking to yourself, "We're not selling enough," it's probably because you're not telling people what problem you're solving for them. You're probably trying to sell vitamins, not pain killers. The people I work with sell pain killers and they get out of pain quick and that's how you make a dramatic effect in people's lives. But that's also how you very quickly go out and sell a product because you just identify the population who's in pain. Like another set of my clients, Alex and Leila Hormozi who are ... They are also just incredible. Two of the most talented and they absorb information and apply it so quickly that I constantly feel like I have to stay on my toes with all three of these clients. There are the type that as a coach, as a consultant, some of your clients, they test you by going so fast that you have to really remember where they were the last time you talked to them and remember with perspective what's going on. It's hard with these guys because they're all exploding and changing the way they run their businesses and modifying who they allow in the business. They're hiring true believers.

When I look at Gym Launch, they are now working with hundreds of gyms. You want the best branding, here's what I can assure you about Gym Launch. The executive suite at every gym franchise knows exactly who Gym Launch is, and I can tell you that Gym Launch, when it comes to branding, does barely any. They might have a website, but I don't think that they do. They have hundreds of gyms. They probably have a website by now, but you know what, I don't remember if they do or not. They have some stuff out there. They have a podcast, but it's not really branding. It's direct response.

Alex is selling stuff on his podcast, and they have a Facebook group where Alex says one thing or somebody asks for a ... Somebody will go into their Facebook group and say, "Hey, can you tell me about this Gym Launch thing?" Then 20 or 30 members will talk about how Alex and Leila saved their lives and saved their marriage and in some cases, saved their gym. Because they were in some other franchise that didn't really have the systems that they needed. So now they're paying a franchise fee and they're paying the Gym Launch fee, but they're now the top member of their franchise. The franchise is trying to figure out how they're doing it. You want to be like everyone in the market ... If you want everyone in a market to know you, go out and sell.

So here's something I want you to just consider, if you are putting time into branding, are you selling enough? Are you going out and asking for the sell enough? Do you have the offer up enough? In my company, every time that we had to run a print ad because sometimes, especially in the past like 10 years, we've had to put ads in trade journals. I've been invited to speak somewhere and they've given us a full page, or whenever I keynote a conference, I usually get a full page in one of the conference guides. I would always drive my marketing department crazy because they would bring me very pretty ads with very little information, and I would send them back as a direct response ad where we sold stuff.

Because, for me, having a pretty ad that somebody's going to flip by and go, "Oh, Alex Charfen, nice picture," or I remember one someone brought was like me on a stage and I was really well lit and it said something like ... I don't remember. A quote from somebody who I'd spoken for that said like, "Longest standing ovation we had every seen," or something, and then it as a CEO of a pretty large organization. I mean, first, it made me feel uncomfortable because it was like an ego ad, not a sell something add, and I didn't want to look like the speaker who ran an ego ad because everybody knows I'm putting the ad together. So instead, we went, I sent it back, and we switched it. We turned it into a sales ad. It was direct response. It had a headline. It had a similar picture of me. But then also had an offer and a call to action where we had a lead magnet and then we walked people through and we sold them something.

This is one of those lessons that I'm really great at coaching and I've missed for years. I mean, we rectified it earlier this year, but I've missed for years. Because we've been giving away eBooks and giving away content and not really putting together the products where we could go and sell to a population that needed it. It took me connecting with Russell Brunson and really seeing my world through his eyes where he said, "Hey, you know more about lowering pressure and noise for entrepreneurs than anybody else I've ever met, and when you talk to an entrepreneur who has a team, they think that you're reading their minds. So you need to do something around those things." With Russell, he suggested that I put together a course, and I did Momentum Master Class. That is the course that we're now selling so that people can experience what we do, and we now have this mastermind that since July we've added tons of companies to. We're seeing all of them just explode because that's really where I've worked and played for so long with CEOs that are a million dollars plus, like it's very hard for any one of them to come up with an issue that I haven't seen multiple times.

That's just for any of you who are thinking to yourself right now, "Man, I really haven't been selling enough," I've been there, and I think that sometimes when we get into that place where we're doing the thing that we've been wanting to do for a long time and it's really important to us, working on the branding, working on the image, working on the pictures, all of that stuff can get interesting and fun. But if we're not working on actually selling and converting and getting people paid into our tribe, you really have to ask yourself what you are working on because the best branding is for you to sell something to someone. I'm watching it constantly. Don't ever look at someone who you admire and inspire to be like and look at everything they have in branding and their Instagram channel and everywhere else and think you have to go duplicate that.

Alex and Leila are selling with two or three custom web pages that are literally just funnel pages. They go right into a program that solves every issue a gym owner could possibly have. Eventually they're going to have incredible branding because they're going to lead the entire category in gyms. If you went and looked at Natalie or Lady Boss today, they look amazing.

But here's what I can tell you about most thought leaders who look amazing today. If you go on the internet way back machine and go back just a few years, you'll see somebody who is figuring out their branding but selling a lot of something and the website will show you. Don't get confused and think that if you put branding in place, it's going to help you sell. If you're already selling, if you're already marketing, if you're already making the people come towards you, branding might enhance your sells, but very few products have ever been sold through branding alone. You have to go out and sell stuff to people.

If you're ready to create more momentum next year than you ever though possible, join my Momentum Master Class. I'm going to be coaching it personally January and February. It's the beginning of the year. Let me show you the keystone habits that for people like us help everything in our lives get better. Go to MomentumWebClass.com, check it out. You'll buy weekly calls with me. They are incredible, life changing. I did some testimonials today with members that we've had in our Beta program for the past few months as we tested it out. The results are incredible. We'd love to have you in Momentum Master Class. So check out MomentumWebClass.com.

I look forward to seeing you on the calls.