dad shorts, black mock-t, priceless insights

My brand development projects create an A-ha moment for clients that no longer surprises me.

First, we work through the Foundation of their brand (vision, mission, values, personality, and purpose). Then, we proceed through Strategy (brand and business goals, target audience, positioning, and core messaging). Finally, we define Identity (visual, verbal, emotional, and intellectual) and often Experience too (physical, digital, emotional, and intellectual).

Before long, the client will say, “I feel like I’m repeating myself.”

“Yeah,” I reply.

“Is that a problem?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

Here’s the advice I give them that’s just as relevant for solopreneurs:

Your values?should?be some of your key differentiators, and those differentiators?should?bleed over into your messaging and verbal identity. And those same values should be?felt?as a part of your brand experience. In fact, if those values don’t shape and constrain how your brand shows up, they’re fantasies, not values.

When they’re real, values pop up all over an organization, and when a client sees the consistency, she realizes she has something precious indeed: a real brand. One that competitors can imitate but never truly duplicate.

One brand pretender can make claims and paint on marketing spin, but it can never copy that competitor’s authentic, non-contrived brand DNA. A real brand is one of the best advantages a company can have.

Lots of iconic brands have proven this out, including Yeti, Patagonia, and Apple.

Can the products alone explain people’s loyalty to the brand and willingness to pay higher prices? No.

Are superior products at lower prices often available from other companies? Yes.

So what gives? What’s with all the loyalty to brands?

People give their loyalty to brands that reinforce their identity and values.

I’ll make a few observations about one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history, and then explain how all this talk about real brands ties into your freelance business.

You should know from the get-go that I’m not a Steve Jobs fanboy. I haven’t read his bio. My cousin had direct experiences with Jobs, and his impression wasn’t favorable.

Jobs undoubtedly made historic, important contributions to art, technology, culture, and humanity, and like many geniuses and luminaries, including Albert Einstein, whose biography I’m reading right now, he was a complex person whose best attributes had shadow sides.

I say that to reassure you that the observations that follow come not from an enthusiastic member of the Steve Jobs cult but from a skeptic who connected the dots between an internal Apple meeting on September 23, 1997, and a timeless branding principle that freelancers can and should leverage.

Let me set the scene for you:

• In 1985, Steve Jobs left Apple, the company he had founded with Steve Wozniak. Depending on who gives the account, Jobs resigned or was fired by the board of directors.
• When he returned in 1997 and replaced Gil Amelio as CEO, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. A CNN Money headline on March 3 read “Apple running out of time .”
• Apple needed to reinvent itself to keep from losing more market share to larger competitors, including IBM and Microsoft, and Jobs began restructuring the company.
• He worked with Jony Ive to refocus the product lines and hired advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day (out of 23 agencies considered) to help change public perception.
• The result of that collaboration was the “Think different” campaign.

Now, it’s easy for us to look back across 25 years and surmise that Apple’s turnaround was inevitable.

Of course the “Think different” campaign would pave the way for the Apple Store, iOS and the App Store, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad.

Of course, the company would go from lagging sales and revenue being down 20% year-over-year in 1997 to being the most valuable publicly traded company in the world in 2023.

Of course!

But no one, not even Steve Jobs, could have foreseen at the time that Apple would go on to become the most valuable company in the world. If his beliefs about branding and marketing had been dead wrong, the “Think different” campaign would have been a bust. The entire strategy would have failed. Apple would have folded.

But Apple is the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, and the transformation began that fall.

Anyone who cares at all about branding and marketing—which means you and me and any freelancer—should lean forward and pay close attention to the ideas and beliefs that were circulating around Apple at the time.

What was in the soil and air?

In that internal meeting on September 23, 1997, Jobs gives us some clues:

“To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It’s a very noisy world. And we’re not gonna get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.”

Here’s another important excerpt:

“We started working about eight weeks ago, and the question we asked (ourselves) was: Our customers want to know who Apple is and what it is that we stand for. Where do we fit in this world? What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done – although we do that well, we do that better than almost anybody in some cases – but Apple is about something more than that. Apple’s core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe.”

You can watch the video clip for yourself?here , or?read the transcript here .

So what’s a freelancer to do with these Jobs’s black mock-t, dad shorts, and insights?

Here’s my advice:

1. Dig down to your core values. Not “business values” but your deeply held personal values. What are the non-negotiables for you? What do you stand for?
2. Now think about the millions of other freelancers around the world with a skill set comparable to yours?and then consider your would-be clients who are trying to find you in a sea of options. What do you want them to know about you? Where do you fit in this world? What do you believe?
3. Weave your beliefs and values into your messaging and marketing.

That’s pretty much it.

We all overcomplicate brand building. It’s not linguistic acrobatics and visual pyrotechnics. It’s authenticity and consistency, and if you’re a solopreneur, then your personal values ARE your brand values. There’s no corporate separation.

There should be zero difference between the personal morals and ethics you profess (in the Christian circles I’m a part of we’d say, “who you are on a Sunday”) and how you conduct business (”who you are on a Monday”).

Zero divide.

People want to stand with you because of what you stand for.

Put your soul into your messaging, my friend.

I think I’m finally ready to say I prefer to fail at being myself over succeed at being someone else.

Better questions lead to bigger proposals.

If you don't already have your own list of questions for paid discovery and strategy sessions, use mine.

Over the years, I've assembled a toolkit of 22 specific consulting questions.

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About Austin L. Church

Hi, I'm Austin, a writer, brand consultant, and freelance coach.

I started freelancing after finishing my M.A. in Literature and getting laid off from a marketing agency. Freelancing led to mobile apps (Bright Newt), a tech startup (Closeup.fm), a children's book (Grabbling ), and a branding studio (Balernum ).?

I love teaching freelancers and consultants how to stack up specific advantages for more income, free time, and fun. My wife and I live with our wrecking balls and two cats in Knoxville, Tennessee, near the Great Smoky Mountains.

You can learn more at?FreelanceCake.com . You can also connect with me on?Twitter .