How To Build A Personal Brand Quickly With Dain Walker
The $100 MBA Show
Branding expert Dane Walker joins Omar Zinhome to dissect the fundamental differences between branding and marketing, emphasizing that brands thrive on emotional association rather than generic claims like trustworthiness. The
Key takeaways
- Dane Walker defines branding as gut-level emotional association versus marketing as the structural framework that drives purchases, illustrated by Mercedes vs. Red Bull comparisons.
- Walker guides Omar through a creative exercise using cars, drinks, and movie characters to extract unique brand associations beyond benign traits like 'trustworthy' or 'authentic.'
Main topics
- Personal branding vs. marketing
- Brand associations and personality development
Notable quotes
"Branding is really the experience, the feeling you get in your gut, how something is perceived, how you associate it to belonging to something."
Conclusion
Listeners gain actionable frameworks for differentiating their brand identity from
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) I'm about to sit down with the branding master, Dane Walker. He is the author of the 90 Day Brand Plan and the host of the Agency Podcast, a podcast that absolutely has blown up recently with over 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube. We're going to talk about a lot, especially when it comes to how to develop your own personal brand, get out of your own way, and make sure your brand helps you with everything you do, including your marketing and your sales. He's worked with big brands like Nutrition Warehouse, Culture Kings, and the very funny Andrew Schultz. He's going to share with you the same exact strategies he used in helping build their brands so that your brand is better by the end of this episode. Let's jump right into that conversation with Dane Walker. Speaker 1 (0:48) Welcome back to the $100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. Speaker 1 (1:01) Hey, if this show has helped you in any way, it would be amazing if you dropped us a quick review on whatever app you're using right now to listen to this podcast. It helps me and my team bring you new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover the podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Speaker 1 (1:20) Dane Walker, so good to have you here, man. Omar, good to see you, my friends. I love it. I love the fact that you're here in Sydney and you're so good at what you do. Thanks, man. Amazing. I want to start with the fact that, you know, you, to me, are one of the best people when it comes to branding. And I'm sure you get a lot of people that come to you that want to work on their personal brand, but they think they have a marketing problem. How many, in terms of like, give me a percentage, how many of you have helped thousands of people? Out of a percentage, how many people actually have a marketing problem and how many people have a branding problem? Speaker 2 (1:49) That's a great question. I think oftentimes people look at branding, marketing, advertising, and sales and mash them into like one big Play-Doh bowl, but they're actually different colors of Play-Doh, if you will. I think when you look at branding, for me, branding is really the experience, the feeling you get in your gut, how something is perceived, how you associate it. to belonging to something. Whereas marketing for me is the framework or the structure to make something happen. Speaker 1 (2:19) So Speaker 2 (2:20) the best analogy I could really put together for people to understand the difference between all of these systems is that, let's say you're driving down the road and you see a big billboard for a Mercedes dealership. And let's say there's a new C-Class car. That's an ad. The advertisement is out in the world talking to you. You might see the ad through... meta or Google or like pixels show up somewhere that says, hey, there's a product that exists that you should buy. In that advertisement, there are branding assets, colors, fonts, typography, logos, and those elements are there to create an association. So you might go, wow, that looks prestigious and sophisticated and cool. Whereas if you see a Red Bull billboard or ad, you might go, wow, that's like human potential pioneering and rebellious. Whereas... Even if you have the same product, let's take Virgin Airlines and Qantas, the associations I'd have with Qantas are heritage, national pride, and Australia's home. And losing your bags. Yeah, and losing your bags, of course. And terrible customer service. And then if you look at Virgin, it's the exact same product at the exact same location with the same color palette. Everything's the same. It's the same plane and the same... process and system and everything. But the brand feels totally different because the association with the logo and with Richard Branson is that this is a brand of entertainment, fun and rebelliousness and kind of youth. So these associations are carried through advertisements. That's brands. The advertisement itself is the frame where the brand's experienced, typically out in the world. Now, back to the analogy with Mercedes. If you go into the dealership because you see the ad, Now you're in their marketing system, right? You walk through the dealership, even though it's Speaker 1 (4:08) a Speaker 2 (4:08) retail experience, it's a marketing system. You walk on the car lot, the product's sitting there with price tags, hoping that you buy the car and maybe you ask a sales rep, take me for a drive in one of these cars so I can experience it. You're in the sales process in the marketing structure or system. So the fact you went to the dealership is because of the marketing system. The marketing is like the conductor that sits behind all the advertisements. that uses the branding to pull you in to buy the product. So whether you're Alex Hamosi selling books or seminars, or you're Mercedes selling cars, or you're an airline trying to get people to buy your ticket instead of the competitor's ticket, the thing that really separates people is the brand. So when you ask the question, how many people mistake marketing for branding and how they know the difference, you can't just rely on a marketing system devoid of branding and expect to win. Speaker 1 (4:59) You Speaker 2 (4:59) need... These systems to work together like cylinders in a car engine, they all have to work together in simultaneous like Speaker 1 (5:07) kind of orchestra, if you will. So would you say somebody that's marketing their business, marketing their products without even spending time on working on their brand, are they wasting their money? Not always. I've Speaker 2 (5:20) met plenty of entrepreneurs that make 10, 20, $30 million without really making an effort to build brands. Sometimes people can be really great at logistics or they have a really potent network or they're in a market that has a deficit. So for example, if you're the only manufacturer that makes toothpicks and no other competitors make toothpicks, maybe you don't need to build a brand because you're the only toothpick factory in the country. I think it's like glitter is, there's like two companies that sell all the glitter in the world. They don't really need to do a lot of branding. So there are these outliers where they don't do a lot of like branding in the way we know branding. They still have a brand. They still have a reputation. People still trust these companies. But essentially for the most of us, like we don't have a logistical moat around our brand that allows us to do something that others can't. If you're in an industry where you're competing and other people are offering the same thing or near the same thing or an adjacent thing to what you're offering, if you're not investing in branding, you're not tuning your car to be as fast as possible. So let's look at this from the analogy of a racetrack. If you're building a vehicle, which is representing your company, one would assume that you would want to have the most efficient, fuel efficient, and fast and maintainable and secure and safe vehicle on the track. If your vehicle's not safe, you're running a risk of not even being in the race. If it's too slow, you can't keep up with the competitors in the market. If it's not cool enough, maybe the fans might not buy merch and cheer the brand Speaker 1 (6:42) on. Speaker 2 (6:43) So let's imagine... The racetrack analogy, let's imagine you're building your own vehicle, which is your company. Why would you not want to have a beautiful design? Why would you not want to have the cleanest vehicle with the best methods and the best of processes? I think for me, if you want to build a company that's mature, that can fight in the market, that the customers care about, you should look at the design. Speaker 1 (7:03) Why? Speaker 2 (7:04) Because it's communication. If you want to sell as much as possible, it's really the art of communication. And if you think about a logo, That's a piece of communication. A color palette is a piece of communication, a tagline, even the font you choose. So imagine I had a piece of paper and on that piece of paper, we use like old school type, like a typewriter type. And I type out the words, I'll be waiting for you. It might be like, oh, it's a poem. If I get a crayon and like scratch it on the page and create a different looking font and says, I'll be waiting for you in big. bold letters, now that's like a death threat. Yeah. All Speaker 1 (7:44) of Speaker 2 (7:44) a sudden, right? So like just changing the font, that's an extreme example. But like if you just look at Speaker 1 (7:49) - No, Speaker 2 (7:49) but it's a good one. Right. If you look at different fonts, like some fonts are a bit heavy and funky. Other fonts are like slim and elegant. Fonts, typography, even like negative space, how you curate photography. These are all just signals that associate with people viewing it in an immediate heartbeat. Like, hey, we're kind of rebellious or we're kind of sophisticated or we're kind of- Cool. Most brands don't really have a personality in their associations. They tend to rely on some pretty basic associations. So for anyone listening right now, what I'm about to say might offend you. So let's just put a big warning label on that. So these are the associations that everyone brings up in a workshop. So not to impress anyone listening, but to impress upon the magnitude of this. I've done thousands of workshops across... the world for about seven years. And something I've noticed is that in a brand workshop, the same things get said in every workshop. I can't wait to hear this. Right? And the associations are usually this. When I ask the client, like, who are we as a brand? Why should the customer choose us? Why are we fantastic? The resounding response is almost always, well, we're trustworthy and we care about the client because we have integrity and we're honest and we're authentic. And we want to do innovation in this industry. And we have the best products. And there's nothing Speaker 1 (9:07) wrong with any of those things. Speaker 2 (9:09) But everybody's saying. Yeah, but those associations are benign. They're not interesting at all. The problem with being benign is that people won't choose you if someone else is exciting. Speaker 1 (9:20) Okay, Speaker 2 (9:21) let's use an example here. Sorry, what's your team member's name again? Josh. Okay, Josh. Josh is behind the camera here. Now, Omar, if you raise your arm and tickle your own armpit, is that... Funny. No. That was pretty benign. Speaker 1 (9:33) But Speaker 2 (9:34) if Josh, if I got you to come over here and tickle Omar's armpit, that would be a violation. Yeah. Right? But the idea of it is kind of funny. Yeah. If he actually got up right now, you'd be like, well, this is kind of inappropriate. This is kind of Speaker 1 (9:45) inappropriate. Speaker 2 (9:46) You need your brand to not be benign and to not be a violation, unless that's what you're going for. It needs to sit somewhere in between. It needs to evoke an association. Josh's got to use the feather. Yeah, use Speaker 1 (9:57) a feather. Speaker 2 (9:59) Right? Yeah. If you used a feather, that would be kind of super weird and whimsical. Speaker 1 (10:05) But those associations would be Speaker 2 (10:07) different, right? But it's a weird analogy, but I think what people tend to do with these associations is they tend to just pick the thing that's kind of weirdly safe. Yeah, vanilla. And it's not interesting. And, you know, there's an ancient Chinese proverb that says if the nail that sticks out gets hammered, Speaker 1 (10:21) and Speaker 2 (10:22) people read that like a negative, but I'm like, well, you want to be... The brand that sticks out and gets hammered with leads and attention. If you want attention, stick out. So yeah, with these associations, what we spend our time doing is we work with clients to figure out what other associations could we build? And there's Speaker 1 (10:38) a Speaker 2 (10:38) quick exercise if anyone cares to do this. Yeah. To Speaker 1 (10:40) get Speaker 2 (10:40) these associations. Okay. So let's do it with your podcast. Yeah. Real quick. All right. So number one is if this podcast were a car, what car would it be and why? Speaker 1 (10:49) That's a good question. Probably... Speaker 1 (10:54) Alexis. Alexis? Yeah. What color? It would be black. Black. And what model? LX470, which is like the four-wheel drive. Okay. Very specific. I like Speaker 2 (11:04) that. And what message are you trying to send? Let's say you wrap that car in this brand. What would you hope people look at and go, oh, that brand is kind Speaker 1 (11:12) of what? It's practical. It's reliable. And it's actually a little bit upscale and thoughtful. Yeah, it's kind of like a little sophisticated. Look cool. Like how Speaker 2 (11:22) you dress. You're always dressed very sharp, very elegant. But there's a bit of an edge. You have a sneaker with a suit and a plain shirt. So there's a sophistication to you. But then there's like a down-to-earth, like relatable, not humbleness, but like a cool factor, right? You're a cool dude. And you're funny. And you're like with it. So there's a few associations. Let's do another one. If you were a drink, doesn't have to be alcoholic. I've Speaker 1 (11:44) had a drink. Probably maybe like some sort of electrolyte drink, like a sports drink. Okay, why? It has use. It hydrates you. You feel better afterwards. Epic. Okay. Speaker 2 (11:57) And then if you were a movie character or anime character or some fictional character or superhero? Jackie Chan. Speaker 1 (12:04) Why Jackie Chan? Because Jackie Chan's willing to do what it takes to Speaker 2 (12:08) get the Speaker 1 (12:08) shot. Break the ribs, jump off a balcony. Exactly. And lots Speaker 2 (12:12) and Speaker 1 (12:12) lots of reps. He's got like thousands of movies. Speaker 2 (12:14) And you do that and you're sure. You put in a lot of reps into everything you do. All right. We'll do one more. Let's say... Okay, if you were a song, what song would you be and why? That's a tough one because I love music. So start with a genre, Speaker 1 (12:26) then Speaker 2 (12:27) maybe pick an artist, and then come down to a song. Speaker 1 (12:30) That's a tough one. Because I'm a huge Michael Jackson fan, so I have to go with Michael Jackson. And if I had to choose a song from him, it would be Man in the Mirror because it's self-reflection. Yeah. Speaker 2 (12:41) Okay, so then if you put those analogies together, you can start to create a mood board. Yeah. So we've got some photos of Alexis, got some photos of Michael Jackson on stage, Jackie Chan. We started thinking about Man in a Mirror. Like you start to put these pieces together. I know it sounds a little weird, but what we do in these workshops with these clients is we start to pull this material together and then they kind of reveal their associations. So when we ask ourselves, okay, what two, three words exist in this montage of material that explains who you are? It's not trust. Speaker 1 (13:07) It's Speaker 2 (13:07) not usually like... Honesty or authenticity. There's something else. Yeah. So then we look at that material. Okay, cool. Like, why isn't this showing up on the website? If this is the energy of the brand, if this is the aura, like, is this coming through the photography? Is this coming through the font? Is this coming through the content? On your social media feed? Speaker 1 (13:25) Yeah, Speaker 2 (13:25) on the social media feed, in your emails. I want to see you like kicking a table over and like screaming. And then there's music in the background. And then you're saying something hilarious like Jackie Chan would. So I think if you think about. As silly as this is, if anyone sits down and just does this, if you were a car, what would you be? If you're a drink, if you're a character or movie star, if you're a song, if you were a sport, if you were a place, if you were a hotel chain, you know, you could kind of do this with anything. If you're a household object, it doesn't matter. Just write down six or seven of these things, write down the associations. And here's the trick with the associations for anyone who wants to take us to the next step is, are there any visuals, colors? Is there textures? Like, can you feel things? Is it grainy and textural or smooth and polished? Is it bright? Is it dim? Is it daytime? Is it nighttime? Are there smells? Are there sounds? Is it loud? Is it quiet? Is it messy? Is it calm? So you just start to look for this material and then just look at your website and look at your content and go, it's not there. Speaker 1 (14:24) So Speaker 2 (14:24) the client usually realizes in a moment of like 20, 30 minutes of doing these exercises, like... Man, Speaker 1 (14:29) we're off Speaker 2 (14:29) brands. We don't have a brand. It's like, yeah, we need a personality. You can still do serious business and still be trustworthy and still do these cool things, but have some energy to it. Because if you look at a brand like Harley Davidson, they're not trying to be trustworthy. People trust that they're like some of the best motorcycles in the world. And everything they do is kind of rugged and masculine. Yeah. Speaker 1 (14:50) And Speaker 2 (14:50) freedom and open road. Yeah. All that. Because trust is a result of you relating to someone. So you're a funny dude. If you meet someone else who's funny, you're going to have more trust for that funny person you met than someone who's maybe a bit stiff. Speaker 1 (15:02) Yeah, I have a hard time getting along with people that don't have a sense of humor. But I love that exercise because it takes people outside the mundane day-to-day business talk and gets them to think. and be a little bit more playful and to just have fun a little bit. And that brings the personality out. Yes. And I love what you just did. And I think that's an amazing exercise for everybody to do. Don't just listen to it. Do it, guys. Take out a paper and pen and rewind and go through it because that's one of the best pieces of advice I've seen when it comes to branding. Yes. And this, you know, this Speaker 2 (15:34) is something that we find brings energy into the room. So there's a quote we have at Rival and it's that, what does it mean to be creative? For me, the definition of what makes something creative, because some people think to themselves, I'm not a creative person for whatever reason. I believe everyone's creative, especially when we're children. It's just kind of beaten out of us usually. You know, when you're a kid, you're imagining stuff and creating stuff all the time. So our definition of creativity is just intelligence, having fun. So when people come into workshops and they're building a brand, it's serious. They're like, we need to make money. We need to get leads. We're going to pay bills and do overheads. And it's like, yeah, but we can have some fun Speaker 1 (16:06) at the same time. Yeah. And why not? Why not do it? and have fun because otherwise you're miserable. Speaker 2 (16:13) Why do you Speaker 1 (16:13) want a business like that? Awesome. Speaker 1 (16:17) You've worked with so many companies and so many brands. One of the things I noticed on your website is that you have a testimonial from Andrew Schultz, the hilarious comedian. I want to read his testimonial because it's absolutely hilarious. He says, the difference between a rat and a squirrel is branding. Dane will turn your rat into the most beautiful squirrel you've ever seen. What did you learn from working with Andrew? Speaker 2 (16:37) I love Andrew. Yeah, so three years ago, I got a DM from a comedian. His name is Mark Gagnon. And he's a cool cat. He's based in... Brooklyn in New York. And he's like, dude, love you. Can we connect sometime? I was like, sure. And I remember like getting on a call and I had blue light glasses at the time. These big, thick, cool blue light glasses. And he gets on a call. He's like, dude, he's like making fun of me immediately. I can't remember what he said, but he's like roasting me. I'm like, man, this guy's rad. And he's like, hey, man, I edit the flagrant podcast with Andrew Schultz and Akash Singh. And he's like, hey, man, we want to work on the branding for the show. And I was like, for sure. I remember asking him, what does Andrew want? He goes, he just feels like YouTube has YouTubiness, like where the thumbnails were kind of YouTube-ish. And he said that Andrew doesn't care if he gets less views, but he wants the brand to be cooler. And this is around the time, if you watch the Flagrant podcast with Andrew Schultz, he went from the old set to the new set, like the subway station set. And they were like, we need to figure out what the brand identity should be. Anyways, long story short, we started working with Andrew. He's a blast to work with, man. He knows exactly what he wants, the way he wants it. But he's just a funny dude. He came to Australia with Mark. And I remember I bought tickets the first night. And I text Mark. I was like, hey, man, great show. He's like, dude, come to the green room. And I remember freaking out because I'd worked with Andrew online. But now it's like, oh, my God, I'm going to the green room. Andrew Schultz is going to be there. And I went in there and the dude's like super humble, came over to me, gave me a hug and was like, man, thank you so much for all the help on the branding. Like it's sick. I gave him a jacket. And then Andrew looks at me, he goes, what are you doing now? I was like, I don't have any plans. He's like, you come with us. So then I'm like hanging out with Andrew Schultz and his posse for the night and getting to know the guy a little better. And he said something really prolific to me that really stuck with me. He said to me, we're on this boat in the harbor in Sydney and we're hanging out talking. And I asked him, I was like, hey man, like what is like? What is comedy? Like, what even is it? Because he's a deep, deep guy. So, like, you see him on stage. He's saying unhinged, like, degenerate, like, jokes nonstop. But then offstage, the second he gets into the green room, it's business. Like, his team huddle around him for about an hour, and they're debriefing every joke, every beat, every minute, everything that has a meticulous feedback loop. And I was like... These guys are executing. He's calling shots. He's telling his videographer what to edit. He's like, this clip needs to go out tonight. Like he's doing business. And then we're hanging out and then he's talking like this deep philosophy. And I'm asking like deep philosophical questions. And he explained to me, he goes, Dane, when you're on stage and you're a young comedian and you're bombing nonstop, what happens is you go out on stage and you're just testing stuff because you don't know who you are. You don't know what your jokes are yet. You're trying to figure out. What's funny? What's not funny? Who am I? Am I funny? Can I make the career or not? This guy is drunk and hates me, but she's laughing way too hard. So he's like, it's just an intense environment. But he said, what happens is at the beginning, you're trying to make material that you hope the audience loves. And he said, inevitably, the greats. And he said, not everyone gets to this point. They do what he phrases as finding their voice. So he's like, what you should do as a comedian, every time you go on stage, whether you're a content creator, a musician, you know, a podcast or whatever, you should have the goal in your mind to poke another brick out of a metaphorical wall in front of you and reveal just a little bit more of yourself every time you go on stage. And I was like, wow. And he goes, eventually the wall comes down and you can just be yourself. And he said that that's been his experience in doing anything is if you want to be great at it, you have to go on this journey. But then he'll say the most unhinged, insane thing, like the quote he's got for me, but he's deep. He's super deep. Thoughtful. And he has an interesting brain where he just knows how to recognize patterns. He knows how to teedle a line to Speaker 1 (20:27) the very edge. I was going to say, he's such a good example of that branding thing you talked about where it's like he's not vanilla, but he's also tight walking the line. He's right on the edge of violating constantly. Exactly. Speaker 2 (20:39) And sometimes he goes a little too far and he comes back and he fixes it. But I think that's where comedy has to live. And I think that's honestly where any content creator needs to live. Yeah. Speaker 1 (20:47) You got to live on the edge of like what's seen as acceptable because otherwise you're just Speaker 2 (20:52) going Speaker 1 (20:52) to fit into the pack and you're never going to have that moment where something's going to really crack the internet. A thousand percent. And I always say the worst thing in business is being ignored. You know, most people, they live in the space where they don't offend anybody. Yeah. But if you're not offending anybody, you're not really attracting your audience. You're not really showing people like, hey, this is. who I'm for and this is who I'm against. Exactly. And there's