[00:00 – 04:26] A logo is the least interesting part of your brand.
[04:26 – 08:24] Your brand is what people expect, remember, and experience of you.
[08:24 – 12:49] Positioning: own a clear space and solve one specific problem powerfully.
[12:49 – 17:16] Point of view: strong opinions and clear strategy beat fluffy, vague language.
[17:16 – 21:53] Messaging: be crystal clear on who you help, how, and the outcome you create.
[21:53 – 26:09] Reputation & experience: every touchpoint either strengthens or weakens your promise.
[26:09 – 30:23] Proof & recognition: show results and repeat your message until it sticks.
[30:23 – End] Audit your brand, fix the weakest links, and let your brand catch up to your growth.
Hello, my beautiful friend, and welcome back to another episode of my beautiful podcast, The Hayley Osborne Show. I am so glad that you are here. My name is Hayley, and I am your host. And I am also other things. So you know, I’m a mum of three little humans. I am your business strategist. I’m a founder of this awesome business and someone who is extremely passionate about helping health brands build businesses they are really genuinely proud of. And I want you to be genuinely proud of the business that you are running.
And today I want to talk about branding because I am all about the branding, and probably not the branding that you’re thinking about, because usually when I say the word brand, I think a lot of people automatically think like logo, colors, fonts, website, like photos, your Instagram feed, packaging. But a logo is the least interesting part of your brand, believe it or not, and all of these beautiful visual things that make businesses look like business is-they’re amazing, and I love all of that really fun stuff.
And I love a beautiful brand. I love a great design, amazing, and I love you know being able to look at a website and immediately think, oh, this is really really good but what I want to say is that the logo and all of that stuff is probably the least interesting part okay because you can have the most beautiful logo in your in your industry in the world and still have absolutely zero idea what you stand for okay you can spend 10k on an awesome website and still really find it difficult to explain why somebody should choose you, and that’s the hardest bit: who you are, what’s the problem that you solve, and what’s the transformation that you provide. And you can have amazing photography and all the right colors and everything, but I think you can still be forgotten about. Okay, because somewhere along the lines you’ve forgotten that most important part, okay, because that bit is a great starting point, and I encourage you, if you’re thinking of redoing it or whatever, whatever, move through fast because that is the least of your worries.
The most important thing that you need to nail is your messaging, okay, so that you don’t become forgettable, all right. And I think there’s a really important distinction, especially for the health and wellness industry, because I’ve seen businesses that invest lots of time and money into what their brand looks like before they’ve made the strategic decisions about what the brand actually means, and there’s two parts to this. It’s either you’re in your infancy and you’re figuring that out. Okay, so you’re working on all of those things, or the other end of the spectrum, which I see so much, is that you’ve just banged it up. Whatever it is, doesn’t matter. You’ve made it up yourself. You’ve kind of slapdash done because you’re busy and you’re like I’ve really I’m really onto something here, and then your website and all that stuff becomes forgotten about, and you’ve your business has grown exponentially, but then you’ve forgotten to bring the rest of the world with you, right? So messaging and and and brand experience, okay?
So all of the beautiful esthetics, like things become a bit disconnected and clunky and feeling awkward, and you’re disconnected from that. Okay, and I think that you know I’ve seen lots of businesses do that, and then you whatever whatever end of the spectrum you’re on, there’s there’s a strategic decision that needs to be made about what the brand actually means to you, because everything comes down to the brand purpose. Okay, so what do you want to do? For me, I just want to help health and wellness businesses kick ass in this industry.
Okay, and grow their businesses without being stuck in their books and stuck in their clinics, that’s my that’s my mission because there is a better way to be able to do this, and that’s the bit that I’m interested in. So I want to break this down properly because it’s it’s the guts of it, right? And and what actually makes a strong brand, okay? And I think you need to think far beyond your logo, and how do you know whether you’re actually building a brand or you’ve simply created a business that looks really nice?
Okay, so there’s about eight parts to this. I might kind of add some more if I feel like I need to as I go along because that’s what I kind of do. Because I look, I love bringing this podcast to you, and if you’ve been listening for a while, you know by now that sometimes I go off on tangents if it feels good. But I’ve been running my business now for eight years. I think it’s about eight years, nine years. I should really pay attention and look back, and I will. But a lot’s happened between them.
So if you’re wondering why. Know the exact number. I had three babies in three and a half years, and I continue to run my business. And a lot’s a blur, and that’s fine. So I will let you know. But prior to that, you know, I’ve spent a long time working on the biggest brands in the world, and that’s what sort of that’s where I started. I have a marketing degree, and I’ve seen I’ve seen everything. I’ve worked with some of the best creative minds in in the world. I used to sit at Google with their team. I used to sit in Facebook with their team on the brands that I worked on.
I was invited to these places, and I used I remember being in the in the Spotify HQ with a band, and it was a Jack Daniels activation, and honestly, so so much fun. But I’ve seen what big brands do to build brands, and that’s what I’m trying to get across to you. And I know there we go. There’s another tangent, but I feel like you need to know. But I think the easiest way for me to explain this is your brand is what people understand. It’s what they remember, and it’s what they expect from your business.
It’s an expectation, and it’s a it’s a collection of the associations that you attach to your name. Okay, so if um somebody says when their friend asks, “Have you heard of them? It’s what people are going to experience that they’re going to when they work with you. Okay, it’s what you’re going to be. It’s what you’re known for, and what you’re going to be known for. And when people step into your world, so I often get from my in my world. Oh wow, Hayley, you’re exactly the same in person as you are online. You’re the same as what you sound like on your podcast, as what you are in person, that’s on purpose because there’s no bullshit, fake sort of business happening around here.
Okay, it is what it is, and that’s exactly what you need to think about with your own brand and what you want to be known for, what you believe in, and the reputation that you’ve built. And then it’s the way that you communicate that through the line, which through the line means through your marketing, through your socials, through your day-to-day communications, how you show up on your stories, how you show up at a networking event, how you show up with your clients, okay, how you get a coffee because you just never know who’s behind the counter, how you are when you’re in the sauna with people that you don’t know. FYI, best way to make friends, best way to meet new people is be in the sauna with them. That’s what I found. I freaking love it. I love it so much.
And maybe I’m a bit nosy. Maybe I just like talking to people. I like understanding people’s stories, but it’s essentially the reputation that you’ve built and the way that you communicate. So you set a standard with the way people are going to associate you. That’s up to you. And when somebody interacts with your business, how do they feel? When they interact with you, how do they feel?
And your visual identity helps you to communicate all of that colors, logos, all of that business, photography, website. It all matters, and those things should be able to underlie and communicate what already exists underneath all of that. Because one question I want you to think about, and I’ve written this down because I think it’s important. If I removed your logo from everything you created tomorrow, would I still know that it was you?
So, you know, I don’t, I don’t actually come to think of it. Apart from my podcast marketing, I don’t think my logo is on any of my social media posts. So, if I took it off, would people still know It’s me. Probably, if I took your name off of an email, if I took your logo off your Instagram post, if I took it off your website, or if I landed on a page in your website where it wasn’t, would I know that it was still you?
There’d have to be something about your language, the philosophy that you have, your point of view, the way that you visually show up in the world, and your way of communicating specifically that makes me think, oh yeah, that’s them, and that’s really interesting to me. And I think that’s when you start to build something recognizable, and it’s that’s the that’s the value, okay? That’s where the value lands. I think multi-million-dollar businesses are competing for people’s attention, and I don’t think that your potential client is sitting at home and waiting patiently for your marketing to pop up. They’re busy, all right, and we’re being served a billion different things every single day. Okay, so when we’re either commuting, when we’re picking up kids from school, making dinner, watching TV, bus shelters, outside of shops, as you’re driving, I can think about I can think of about 100 other examples. But your brain needs to create short.
Okay, and you know, in terms of I see that, I hear that, I experience it, and I know who that is. And then, even more importantly, I know what they stand for, and I know what they’re about. Okay, so there’s eight things now that I’ve written down as well that I want you to start thinking about. And if I was to sit across the table from you, looking at your business. These are the eight things that I would want to understand about your brand, and you can almost use these as an audit while you are listening to me here right now. So either get your notes app out, piece of paper, whatever works.
I hope you’re doing multitasking. So maybe it’s the notes up on your phone, because if you’re going to invest in building a brand, this is the stuff that I want you to think about. Because I think we are all building a brand in some way, shape, or form. Whether it’s a personal brand, whether it’s a named brand, we are building that, and our brand is also our reputation. Okay, so the first one is positioning. What do you want to be known for? It sounds really simple, but it’s not. And this is where I think that most businesses fall over because people want to be known for about 50 billion things when you really need to own a few of them. But when you want to own so many of them, you’re actually owning none of them.
Does that make sense? And I think when people have a problem, do they think of you to solve it? And this is where you become really powerful. So I think if I ask you what you do, and you give me about a five-minute answer, we’ve got work to do, guys. Okay, if your Instagram bio has a billion slashes. I help women with health and wellness and confidence, mindset, energy, transformation, empowerment. Like we have work to do, because that’s not clear to me at all. And they’re really, they’re not bullshit words, but they’re very high up words that aren’t very meaty. Okay, they’re kind of fluff words. Purpose.
Well, that could mean something differently to everybody. Okay, so really great positioning requires you to make a choice on the space that you actually want to own. Okay, what problem do you solve very, very, very well, and who do you solve it for? And why should I remember you for solving that problem? All right. So positioning. The next one is your point of view. What do you believe?
And I think this is tough because sometimes we don’t want to have really strong opinions because of what other people might think of us, but strong brands do have strong opinions, and they have a way of seeing their industry differently and how they can help their audience differently.
Okay, standards, philosophies, point of view-they have their ideas and they say them on repeat. All right, so what do you want to do? You want to love the shit out of your industry and the people that you serve, how? And this doesn’t mean that you need to be controversial for the sake of engagement. I hate that. I actually don’t like the word hate, and I don’t say it very often. I don’t like that, and I think picking fights and this and that, and I just it’s icky, it’s gross, and so like I feel I I never I stay out of controversy on and I always have on my social media. Okay, I’m not. You’ll never see me talk about politics. If you want to hear about my point of view on politics, go read the news. Okay, I’m not a journalist.
I’m here to do one thing, and that is to help you build your business and do it strategically and do it well. Okay, I’m not the news, so I don’t tap into that. So controversy for me, hell to the no. And I think you need to ask yourself a question of like, what have you learned from doing this work that shapes how you specifically do it differently? Because there, there’s never a unique message ever anymore. There is no unique unique messages. We have an alphabet, and everybody knows it.
Okay. However, I know you’re probably thinking, Hayley, there’s a unique messengers. Okay. So your point of view and how you say what you need to say will resonate with some people more or others. Okay, and what works for say you you might resonate with the way I talk about marketing and brand, but then to hear somebody else talk about it, you’re like, it just doesn’t hit the same, and that’s normal, and that’s the same for you as well. Okay, I’m certain that you’re not the only one that does what you do. However, you are your you are a unique messenger in what you do, and people love you for you, and they want what it is that you offer that other people. Offers they want it from you because they like you, okay. And I definitely believe strategy comes before tactics. Okay, I believe that you can create all the content in the world, but if your positioning is unclear and shit, you will simply add confusion to your audience. Simple.
It is very very simple. I think that number three is definitely your message. Okay, can people understand what you do? This is where I see so many amazing businesses fall over on their ass because people cannot understand them. And if let me tell you that if you don’t understand what you do and you cannot clearly articulate it in a really confident way, your audience will not be able to understand what you do, how you are different, how you are here to help them and solve their problems and transform their life. Okay, the branding looks incredible, amazing, but then I read your homepage and I think, I have absolutely no idea what you sell because it’s a little bit fluffy, it might be beautiful language, but it’s a little bit fluffy.
So you know, I think, what are we actually doing here? What problem are we solving? You know, saying like helping you reconnect with the most aligned version of your authentic self. Like, what even is that? That is fluff. Okay, how do we do that? How do you do that? That’s not good enough now. In 2026, consumers expect a certain things from you, and one of them is to be very clear in your message. So if you if your business is growing exponentially, awesome. But if you’re finding a little bit like things are kind of like ball and chaining along the way. I want you to take a step back and think about:
Do people understand exactly what I do, or am I so up in my own head that I am so close to this that I can’t see it anymore? All right. So what are we actually doing here? What problem are you solving, and what changes after I work with you? Who is it for? And there’s a place for emotion in messaging, absolutely. But I think clarity wins every single time.
So, emotion, you know, reconnecting, authentic self, blah blah blah, but I think that when you’re clear, concise, straight through the line, you will win every single time. You will win every single opportunity that comes your way. Who you help, what you help them with, what outcome you create, why your approach is different, and what they should do next with what you’ve given them. Okay, so when you roll out your messaging, so if I was in an elevator and I would say like, “Hey, what do you do? When you roll that out, then so for me, you know, I help health. My thing is, and it is not a secret that I help health professionals grow to 30k months with scalable offers and a simple marketing system that works without the overload of clients.
Now, the next thing someone should really say after that is, “Cool, how? And I will say, I do that through my VIP days. I do that through my social media strategy. I do that through my marketing strategy, and I do that through a handful of retainer clients that apply to work with me one on one. Okay, so whether that be through one on one coaching, whether that be through me managing their marketing through the line, so doing the work, yes, I do that still, but it is really an application process. So I’ve got a bunch of beautiful clients that I work with ongoingly every month, and I look after their social media. I look after their emails. I look after Facebook ads for some of them. I look after their social media strategy from a Periscope view.
I am their marketing go-to, so anything that they need done, anything, these are the clients that I work with. And if you’re thinking, “Oh my God, Hayley, I would love you to be able to help me with that doing side of my business, I absolutely can. Send me an email or fill out the contact form on my website. Reuben, send me a voice message on Instagram. I love hearing people’s voices, but that is how your business needs to evolve. So, what actually ties beautifully back to what we talked about a few episodes ago is, you know, your business is is evolving. You, as the founder, are evolving.
Your clients, therefore, are evolving, and therefore your messaging needs to keep up. So, messaging is a big one, and that’s something that I often see with the people that I work with. That that’s where it becomes a bit shaky. Is messaging is so hard and. Business owners and founders are so close to their business that they can’t see it anymore, and therefore you can’t really see how you help people. All right. The next one is reputation. What do people say about you when you’re not in the room?
This is your brand, okay, and you don’t have complete control over it, unfortunately, but you absolutely have influence on it, okay? Are you known for being really brilliant in what you do? Are you known for getting results? Are you known for being really thorough? Are you a straight talker, generous, premium, strategic? Are you reliable? Do you show up on time? Do the words that come up repeatedly in your testimonials match what who you say you are and what you do, okay? And what do your clients tell other people about you? Okay, start to look for patterns, and what are people consistently saying?
Because sometimes I think your clients can see your differentiator more clearly than you can, and maybe it’s you reaching out and asking them, “Hey, how would you introduce me? If you’re finding it hard, that’s a little bit of research that you can do. Okay, and you might think they’re buying your knowledge, and you know every testimonial talks about how safe and supported they felt, and you might think they’re buying your service, and they keep talking about the clarity that you gave, which is so different.
You might think that the greatest strength that you have is your systems and your processes and the frameworks that you use, and they keep telling people around you that you make everything that is complicated feel very simple. Pay attention to that. Okay, your your reputation contains clues about your brand. Gold. Your reputation contains clues about your brand. Okay, the the fifth one is experience.
How do people feel to work with your business? This is one of my favorites because brand isn’t something that finishes when somebody clicks buy, like buy me. I think brand continues through your entire customer experience. How quickly do you respond? What does your onboarding feel like? So, let me paint a picture for you. Whenever somebody comes into my world and they say, “Hayley, I want to catch up with you. Let’s have a a clarity call over Zoom. It’s free. It’s 15 minutes. I want to work with you. Da da da. And I say, yep. We get off the call, and I usually say, I will get you a quote or a scope of work for your business by the end of today. Okay, that is how quickly I respond by the end of the day because it is important.
Okay, when someone. jumps on a call with you, they already know and have already made up their mind on whether they want to work with you or not. So what happens after is up to you, and I always, always follow up on the same day because there’s something in that, okay. How do you communicate? How does your team communicate? And what happens if something goes wrong? How easy is it to book with you? And are you following up? What do your invoices look like? It is that it is a full on through the line thing, and I would definitely consider myself as more of a business strategist these days because I look at all of that, and that’s branding too. Every touch point of yours is either reinforcing what you say, what you stand for, or it’s strengthening it, or it’s weakening it.
Because if you position yourself as a premium business at the beginning, but then your follow up is shit, and your invoices are not great, and you know you don’t say what you don’t do what you say that you do, then there’s massive a massive disconnect. Okay, because if everything requires hard work, your promise doesn’t become your promise anymore. Okay, and your promise needs to show up in the actual experience of how people are coming into your world. Okay, the next one is proof. So why should people believe you? Okay. What can you prove? Do you have results, testimonials, case studies on your website? Is it in your media pictures? Is it in your body of work? Show me.
And I think particularly in the health space, trust matters so much. And I think it’s so important. And your marketing needs to communicate your expertise in a way that is credible, and in a way that is responsible, and in a way that is down to earth human. Okay, and more on that next week. In because I’ve I’ve got a plan on how I want to roll out the next few episodes because, oh baby, your human brain and your point of view, okay, and how well you can articulate that is going to be the defining factor as we move through the motions in the way that AI is moving so fast.
Okay, that will set you apart. Your ability to think for yourself and come up with crazy, awesome ideas, and that’s one of the reasons why VIP days are really important. Because we take you out of the office, we go into a beautiful environment, and you are outside of that to be able to come up with ideas that land and absolutely kill it. Now, as part of that VIP day, I’ve actually started introducing a little bit of Claude to help add some skills into your business. So I’ve done that in my own business.
You know, Claude has is helping me so much to be able to streamline things and take out tasks that I was doing that I don’t need to do anymore, and I show you exactly how to do that in your business as well, in those VIP days. So I’ve been upskilling myself, and I friggin’ love it. Like, hello, I’m a mum of three young humans. I have a household to run, and I have a beautiful, thriving business that’s growing to run as well. And I’m not just going to sit by and let it pass me by. So this is actually helping me, and it’s blowing my mind. Anyway, the next one is recognition.
So are you repeating yourself enough? Okay. So what I often find with business owners is that you say it so many times that you get bored of it, so that you change. However, I think, and it’s going to annoy some of you when I say that because creative people and founders, and you know, building personal brands, we love new things, new hooks, new taglines, you know, new offers, and this and that.
But in the meantime, your audience sitting over here has barely registered the message that you sent three weeks ago, okay? Because you’re consuming 100% of your content, but your audience isn’t okay. They missed the email that week that you sent. They missed the video that you created, that awesome reel. Okay, they didn’t even open the email that you sent two weeks ago because they were on holidays. They started following you yesterday, and they don’t know what you stand for. There’s so many reasons. Okay, so you need to continually repeat and repeat and repeat the problems that you solve and the transformation that you provide, because that’s what you want to be known for.
Okay, and it. I don’t want you to be like word for word robotic AI this and that, but strategically. Okay, because when you start repeating it, it starts to build recognition, and recognition means that you will start to be a little bit more familiar, okay, and that’s where that consistency comes in because you can’t just show up once a week and think, oh yeah, that’s consistent, because it’s not, it’s not enough anymore, okay. And when you start to be more familiar, people start to trust you. It’s the same thing as when you go into a new coffee shop. All right, you don’t know the person, but then the person in front of you that’s ordering from the barista that they’ve been hanging out with every you know five days a week for the last two years. They they should know each other by name. What do you do in your spare time? Like there’s a relationship that you can see there, but when you trust someone, it makes buying easier.
Whether it’s a coffee or whether you are, you know, deep in it, and you are a speech pathologist, right? Physio Cairo. So if you’re bored with your message, good. You might finally be saying it enough. Okay, so let’s bring all of this together. All right, we’ve got positioning, point of view, messaging, reputation, experience, proof, and recognition that the person behind the brand is interesting, and that you are the person behind the brand that is interesting. And your logo, I mean, I hope that it’s lovely. I genuinely do. But your logo cannot save your unclear positioning if that is the case. And a color palette that’s sensational can’t fix a message that you are saying that is going to make you forgettable.
Okay, so I think building a visual layer is really important, okay. But it’s not the trust factor that’s going to give somebody the experience that they’re looking for to help you solve the problem that they need solved, okay. So I think that is exactly why, and this is when I work with businesses strategically. I’m looking at the whole thing, and I’m not interested in giving you another list of things to be able to do or to post on Instagram while ignoring the fact that you’re actually very confusing. Okay, I don’t want to send more people and more traffic to your website when when people get there, they don’t understand who you are and what you do and why you are actually different. I’m not going to do that. Okay, making more marketing doesn’t mean that it’s better marketing. Okay, sometimes I think what can be the most commercially powerful thing that you can do commercially to make more money in your business is stop zoom out. And ask, what are we actually building here? What do I want to be known for? Who am I becoming? Where do I stand? Is my messaging kick ass? Okay, and the way that people come in and out of my business is that customer experience beautiful? Okay, even down to the way that you send your invoices and the way that you send your scope of work out. Now that to me is a beautiful strategy.
So before I wrap up, I want to give you something practical to do. Score your business out of 10, okay, in each of the areas that I’ve spoken about today, and give yourself a score, and then look at the lowest one or two because that’s where I would start. Okay, I don’t think you need to completely rebrand every six months, but you do need to be able to understand where the disconnect is, and every business eventually hits a disconnect, okay? Because we grow so fast, we’re always up leveling as a person, and then our business is growing over here. But are we maintaining that the way that we’re showing up in our marketing? All right, and that’s really useful information. All right, so if you’ve been listening to this episode and you’re thinking, “Shit, Hayley, oh my God! I know my business is good. I know my clients get great results, but I don’t think my brand and my messaging and my marketing actually reflect how good we have actually become.
This is exactly the kind of business that I want to work with inside my VIP strategy days-they are elite intensive days, and they’re intensive for a reason because we are fast moving, and it is fully catered for. There is a a dedicated person that comes and looks after us for the day, coffees, teas, whatever you want, so we can spend the whole day looking at your whole business, okay, and we’re not distracted by, you know, being hungry or thirsty. So where are you now? Where do you want to go? What does your positioning look like? Your offers, your messaging, your customer journey.
Customer journey is everything, okay. And your marketing strategy, and what opportunities are in there that you can see for growth, okay? Because what you need to become known for in this next chapter of your business is going to be incredible for you. But sometimes we’re so close to this that we can’t see what everybody else sees, and I think you need someone sitting across the table from you saying, “This is the opportunity. This is background noise. This is what I’d simplify, and this is what I would essentially amplify. And this is where I think you should go next. And that’s the work I bloody love.
So if you feel like your business has grown, but your brand and marketing need to kind of catch up with it, send me a DM. Send me a DM just with the words VIP day, and let’s have a conversation. And before you go, I want to leave you with this: the strongest brands are the ones that we recognize when we listen and read and see what they do before we even know what their logo looks like. Okay, that’s what you’re building. Thank you so much for listening, guys. I know this was a bit more of a longer one, but I’ll see you next week for another episode of the Hayley Osborne Show.
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