How to make your brand so simple, strangers can’t help but buy from you
I recently noticed an interesting thing about all my favorite brands:
They are insanely simple.
Apple - "Think Different."
Louis Vuitton - "The Art of Travel."
Tesla - "Accelerate the advent of sustainable transport and electric technology."
They’re beautiful because they’re simple. They’re rich because they’re simple.
That’s why I want Founder OS to feel insanely simple from now on.
Because there are only 2 reasons why people don’t buy from you:
- They don’t want what you sell
- They don’t trust you
Simplicity solves both.
Simple offers are easy to want. Simple messaging is easy to trust.
I learned this while building Herb.
At first, we were really unclear on how we served the market. Were we a platform? Writers specialized in cannabis? We didn’t know. And so our prospect didn’t know either.
It wasn’t until we simplified our message to “We’re a CMaaS - Cannabis Marketing as a Service” that it clicked. Within a year, our revenue 3X’d.
Building an insanely simple brand is so simple, it’s hard.
It boils down to unblocking the 3 chakras of simplicity:
- Clarity
- Obsession
- Consistency
Read on to simplify your brand once and for all.
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But now, back to simplifying your brand…
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Clarity.
The world is noisy.
If your message isn’t clear, 90% of people won’t listen to it, and the 10% who do will forget it later.
That’s why your message needs to be clear. A clear message cuts through the digital sea of noise like a bright lighthouse. It’s the guiding light that leads them to shore (your brand).
Now, clarity isn’t a one-off. It’s a process. Almost no brand starts with clarity.
Nintendo started out making cards and toys. Today, they make video game consoles. Founder OS started as “The Soulful Entrepreneur” with a lot of woo-woo spiritual stuff. But then my mentor Alex gave me some tough love. He told me “I only give a sh*t about the systems”. Today, I focus mainly on the proven systems we help founders build.
So how do you find clarity?
Finding brand clarity is kinda like filtering water. Old water filters purify grubby water by seeping it through layers of stone, gravel, and sand.
When you find a company, your message is grubby, too. But as you go through sh*t, as you get feedback, as you pivot, you remove the excess and purify your message.
Just like finding your own identity, finding your brand identity takes time.
I do have 3 pieces of advice though -
- Detach your founder ego from the brand identity. The message that resonates the strongest with you may not be the one that resonates with your target. If that’s the case, you need to be able to let go.
- Talk with customers. Often. Note the keywords they use to describe what they love about your company. Re-iterate your brand identity based on that.
- Reflect privately. As a founder, the strength of your vision is the strength of your company’s vision. You need near-delusional conviction in your brand identity. You need to obsess about it.
Obsession.
Obsession is the secret ingredient to greatness.
It’s not enough to have a clear message. People can’t read your mind. You need to tell the world about it. A thousand times.
The most successful founders are 100% rational in their day-to-day thinking. But when it comes to their vision, they’re lunatics. Look at what Bryan Johnson is doing with Blueprint. What Elon does with SpaceX. People call them crazy until they’ve achieved the impossible.
You need to become obsessed with your message. If your message isn’t so beautiful and so clear that you obsess over it, it’s not clear enough yet.
So, what does obsession mean?
It means that you and your team go to lengths others deem “unnecessary” or “overkill”. And you don’t care about what they think, simply because you love what you’re doing.
For me, it comes down to 4 things:
- Quality. You don’t settle for the 80/20. You recognize that a few things need to be perfect. If Apple would’ve had a “better done than perfect” mindset, they’d never have created the iPhone.
- Design. You view design as art. It’s not another chore on the to-do list, but a contribution of the highest order.
- Copywriting. You spend 20 attempts re-writing that opening sentence because it needs to be perfect.
- Social Proof. You obsess about creating outcomes so good for your customers, they can’t help but tell their friends about you.
How do you become obsessed?
Here’s the challenge -
You can’t fake obsession, because it’s love.
You truly need to believe in your company’s vision and your goals. I’ve found that money isn’t enough of a motivator for me. My company needs to align with my Ikigai for me to become obsessive about it.
If I had to create a process for it, here’s what I’d do:
- Principle 1: Work on what you love. Do the Ikigai exercise and align your company message to it.
- Principle 2: Develop great taste. Your quality of input becomes your quality of output. I spent 100s of hours studying my favorite brands to develop Founder OS’s new messaging.
- Principle 3: View the world as a child. Children obsess over everything they do because they have no expectations. Do work that feels like play.
Consistency.
Consistent messaging is like a farmer planting seeds.
You don't just throw one seed in the ground and expect a bountiful harvest. You plant many seeds, water them daily, and patiently wait for them to take root and grow. Your message needs consistent nurturing to bloom in your audience's consciousness.
Humans need to hear a message 100 times before it sticks.
So once you’re obsessed with a clear message that resonates like crazy with your target audience…
…you need to repeat it forever.
As your content team grows, this becomes harder.
But here are 2 practices that have helped me:
1) Create foundational memos for important talking points.
I put a lot of energy into articulating the most foundational ideas of Founder OS, like:
- Story of Founder OS
- My story
- Our philosophy
- Our movement
- What we help people with
- Which problems do we solve
- Etc.
These are 100-500 word memos explaining each of them concisely. Then, I share these memos with every person that creates content for Founder OS to read. This ensures consistency.
2) Create content checklists for your team.
Checklists are helpful because they set a low bar for your content. It keeps your team accountable.
I created a checklist for each content medium that I share with writers. They need to check off the list for each piece of content. Here’s what I include:
- Consistency with Founder OS messaging
- Persuasive method
- Proofreading
Here’s an example:
(by the way - I share these checklists with Founder OS members. Learn more here)
Do you want help simplifying your brand?
If that’s so, there are two ways I can help you:
1) You can join Founder OS to get access to all my plug-and-play systems for simplifying your brand.
We help you grow your business to $5M ARR. We do so by giving you the systems to build a beautifully simple, effortless, and profitable personal brand.
>>> Click here to apply for a Founder OS Consult
2) You can get my Brand Simplifier OS at zero cost.
Brand Simplifier OS is a system to help you simplify your brand through tailored introspection using AI.
>>> Click here to use Brand Simplifier OS (worth $149)
By the way -
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That’s all for today. Stay simple.
Let’s win together,
Matt
