 Paul, what's up everybody? Once again, it's Brandon, man, Sean. And today we got to talk about branding without boxes because I know a lot of you artists out there are wondering how can I brand myself but still be fluid? I want to do all of these different things. I don't want to be boxed in. If you haven't watched the first video on brand positioning, definitely do that. But this one we're going to talk about how you can get that done without overthinking. Now I'm about to show you the video that I mentioned at the beginning of part one and then after that we got to talk about the fact that all of these artists are trying to find their niche but why niches are not enough. Here's that video. Why, how, what? This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others aren't. Let me define the terms really quickly. Every single person, every single organization on the planet knows what they do 100%. Some know how they do it. Whether you call it your differentiating value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP. But very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do. And by why I don't mean to make a profit. That's a result. It's always a result. By why I mean what's your purpose? What's your cause? What's your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care? Well as a result the way we think, the way we act, the way we communicate is from the outside in. It's obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. But the inspired leaders and the inspired organizations regardless of their size, regardless of their industry all think, act and communicate from the inside out. Let me give you an example. I use Apple because they're easy to understand and everybody gets it. If Apple were like everyone else a marketing message from them might sound like this. We make great computers. They're beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Wanna buy one? And that's how most of us communicate. That's how most marketing is done. That's how most sales are done. And that's how most of us communicate into personally. We say what we do. We say how we're different or how we're better and we expect some sort of behavior, a purchase, a vote, something like that. Here's our new law firm. We have the best lawyers with the biggest clients. We have, you know, we always perform for our clients to do business with us. Here's our new car. It gets great gas mileage. It has, you know, leather seats by our car, but it's uninspiring. Here's how Apple actually communicates. Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one? Totally different, right? You're ready to buy a computer from me. All I did was reverse the order of the information. What it proves to us is that people don't buy what you do. People buy why you do it. People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it. This explains why every single person in this room is perfectly comfortable buying a computer from Apple. But we're also perfectly comfortable buying an MP3 player from Apple or a phone from Apple or a DVR from Apple. But as I said before, Apple's just a computer company. There's nothing that distinguishes them structurally from any of their competitors. Their competitors are all equally qualified to make all of these products. In fact, they tried. A few years ago, Gateway came out with flat screen TVs. They're eminently qualified to make flat screen TVs. They've been making flat screen monitors for years. Nobody bought one. Dell came out with MP3 players and PDAs. And they make great quality products and they can make perfectly well designed products and nobody bought one. In fact, talking about it now, we can't even imagine buying an MP3 player from Dell. Why would you buy an MP3 player from a computer company? But we do it every day. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Now remember, in part one I said positioning is about differentiation and communication of your values. When you dig deeper into your values, you're really saying what you believe in. And if you're able to do that as an artist, that's going to help you connect on another level. And if you haven't figured it out yet, this is the answer to being able to brand more fluidly. As Simon Sinek mentioned, Apple is able to sell multiple types of products, but you know what Apple stands for. It's not about the product first, it's about the brand and the personality behind the product. Apple has a belief system. That's no different than if you look at people like P. Diddy who are innovative in lifestyle branding. He sold everything from music, clothes, colognes, alcohol, he's selling an entire lifestyle, but you know the type of lifestyle that P. Diddy believes in. It's vastly different than how artists like Kendrick Lamar promotes themselves. And if you aren't able to do this through communicating your beliefs or at least don't have the platform to make it super clear yet, you can always do this simply by doing it through your actions. Going to old school again, you can look at Jay-Z. He really owned the role of being the first rapper to bring in the hustler's perspective. Gangsta music, violin music, all that existed well before Jay-Z, but he was the first to really go deep into the hustler's perspective and what that lifestyle was like and it helped him to corner a market to build his platform off of. But first he was doing this by action by simply telling the stories through his music. He didn't try to push the term I'm a hustler until later on, when he really branded himself as that. And now you can see all of the moves that he makes brand-wise make sense because his beliefs are those beliefs of a hustler. Chance the Rapper does this very well when we talk about just kind of setting your positioning through just taking actions. He never really said I'm this political activist and you need to follow me in this way, but he threw a free concert before the presidential election. He's donated money through schools. He's done so many things in that space where it becomes clear over time and the people that appreciate that positioning actually pay attention. And keep in mind, you don't have to always start off like this, you can always evolve in the same way Jay-Z initially didn't really try to brand himself heavily as I'm a hustler. He just was a hustler. Kanye West did the same thing because he didn't come out the gate saying I'm this great artist. He was just really trying to establish himself as a musician. Just to hone in on that power of positioning again till this day you see Kanye West and Jay-Z as the hustler and the artist and they're number one in their categories. It's arguable if they're the greatest of all time when it comes to being the best rapper hands down but when you think about the best hustler slash rapper, Jay-Z when you think about the best artist slash rapper you think Kanye West. And all in all, this is the exact reason why your niche is not enough. I know it's so popular these days. Everybody wants to find a niche and they say, hey, if as long as I find a niche I'll be successful. I don't need to have all of the world. All I need is my small segment. Well, here's one thing to consider. Go back and look at the video that I put in the middle of this clip and watch how belief-centric it is. I talked about how positioning is really about communicating your values. A lot of people have a niche but they think just because I'm doing stuff in this area that means this area is going to love me but it doesn't mean anything if you can't connect with that niche. Me saying I'm targeting anime lovers doesn't mean that anime lovers will actually care about what I put out if I don't do a good job at communicating the same values that they have. How do I relate to people who care about the same things that are in my niche? Because those are the people that are gonna be attracted to you. The people that are attracted to the same values that you have. Of course, I could talk about that in another video but just know that if you fail to be able to connect by communicating similar values to whoever you're targeting it won't matter who you're targeting. Of course, as always, I would love to know your thoughts on some of the things brought up in today's video and other than that, if you liked this video go ahead, hit that like button. 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