Build a Brand: Beginner to Boss

1. Class Trailer: Five years ago, I made a class that has become my most popular class on Skillshare, and hopefully a class you enjoyed, how to empower your brand. But something's always scratched in my mind about that class. And what it was is, what about those of you out there that want to build your brand from scratch? This is that class. Now, it doesn't matter if you want to build a massive brand like Nike or perhaps you just want to build your own personal brand. Something even more important as AI and creativity start to blur a little bit. Both share the same building blocks, and that's why I'm really excited to teach this class because I will be building my own brand at the exact same time as you are building yours. So you can go through step by step with me and see my process to building my brand, the more fundamental things of how to come up with that idea, how to come up with your brand name and find your target audience, and have the confidence that the idea you is the right idea to be spending your time on. And what is possibly even more exciting is this is just one of two new classes about branding I'm bringing to Skillshare. So you can think of this class almost as a prequel to my previous empower your brand class. And the idea is that all three classes will make up a trilogy of branding lessons. So the best thing you can do is get stuck into this one right now, so you're ready when that one comes out in a few months time. So like always, grab yourself a cup of coffee, take a seat, and we will figure out what is that idea that can turn into your brand. 2. Welcome & Class Tools: Hello, welcome. It's lovely to have you here. It's very exciting to be back talking about branding. It's been a while since my empower your brand class, and I really hope that you enjoy this one as well. Now, today, I have my remarkable with me, one of my favorite tools, and we're going to be using this just to walk through some things. But all you need is a bit of paper and pen or a laptop or anything where you can write and make notes. Now, today, you're going to see lights shifting here there, everywhere. It's England, and there are clouds and there our sun. Who cares? We're just going to get through everything we're going to get through today and I really hope you enjoy what we're talking about. 3. Personal Brands vs Business Brands: Sure all of you can think of traditional brands, companies like Nike, McDonald's, the big corporations, but we know them for their logos, for the tag lines, for the feeling that they present. In the last ten years, there's been a bit of a swing, a bit of a shift towards personal brands. So the first thing is just to figure out, do we want to build a personal brand or a business brand. The real goal of a brand is to amplify your voice beyond just you. So even if you have a personal brand, at some point, people may be aware of the brand David Beckham versus the person David Beckham. So you start to feel a sense of, okay, the brand David Beckham is all about clothing, fashion, high end jewelry. It's that top level of style. That's the brand David Beckham versus the person David Beckham. It's about being known for something a little bit more than just you. So what is that thing that people can latch onto, hold onto and really actually recognize that is how we identify that person. And there are overlaps. Sometimes we'll start in a personal brand, and we'll turn it into a business. A really good example of this is BPN by Nick Bar. So Nick Bear is a he was in the Army. He is very much about fitness and physique. And he started his own protein powder company, BPN. Now that company, as a brand, sits independently from him despite a big overlap. There are times where he has his personal channel. So we take Nick Beer, for example, Nick Bear has his personal YouTube channel, and in here, he details his journey, everything he's doing. This one is all about him. Over here, in BPN, there are other athletes, and then there's products. Forgive my spelling, I will try and write Nia than that for the rest of this video. Whereas on the personal channel, we have family we have his journey. But there very much is a sort of infusion between the two. You can go to BPN and you can feel the same tone, same quality, same styling, as you can find on his personal channel. They actually very well aligned, and that kind of gives Nick the benefit of having almost two types of branding sitting underneath one brand. And the reason you kind of had to look at this is with a personal brand, there is an element of if something goes wrong, let's say you get really unwell or you need a break or whatever, your brand stops. When it's a business that allows you to pass on that responsibility to have other things going on. So it allows you to step away a little bit more. And this is really the main difference between a personal brand and a business brand. It's that separation of you from the work. 4. Finding Your Brand Idea: So how do we know which one we want to do? Well, what we're going to do is actually figure out what we want to build, and then we'll be able to answer this. So I'm going to create a new page, and this is where you can join in here. So what you want to do is draw a venn diagram, which if you're not 100% sure what that is or how to do it, you're going to draw two overlapping circles of the same size, and you can just do freehand. It doesn't have to be nice and neat right now. Then you can do a third one that overlaps on this bottom section. So it should look something like this. When you're looking to start a brand or business, there are two things that everyone will tell you need to think about. First one is, what are your skills? So what are the things that you are really good at? This makes sense, right? We want to have a business brand that we can actually do that is feasible. The next one we want to think about is, well, what do we enjoy doing? But the third one that I think people forget a little too often is actually it's the lifestyle that you want. Because this is massive in that you could have really great skills and you could really enjoy doing something. But the lifestyle you want, well, if you do that thing, it doesn't actually fit into that lifestyle. And the whole point of starting a brand or business or personal brand is for you to get where you want to get to in maybe a year, maybe five years, maybe ten years time. And that means thinking ahead. Well, what do I want my life to look like at that point? Because that will help in deciding a personal versus a corporate or business brand, something slightly different from your involvement. So I'm going to use M as an example here, and please follow along with your own lifestyle skills and what you enjoy. So if he's like with our skills, that's probably the easiest one to think about. For me, my skills, dare I say, is film. So that's the main skill I have. I am a film writer, film director, producer, cinematographer. Anything to do with film, I'm actually I think I'm right at, so there's that skill for me. Another one is teaching. So obviously, I teach here on Skillshare, but I also teach part time at a university, and that has actually been something that's come quite naturally to me, something that I've got a lot of skill at, I think, and a lot of evidence to kind of back up. That is a skill for me. Other skills that I have a little bit of that maybe could develop further. So I'm interested in web design. I'm not saying I am a web designer, but it's something that I understand. Okay, I know, the bare bones are things to get by. I know a little bit more than most people things about SEO, containers, anything like that. So that is an element of something where I could learn a skill. Other skills is music. You might not know. I used to play the saxophone many years ago, and currently trying to re learn the piano after a long time away and hockey. Again, used to play hockey a lot. It's a skill that I could maybe come back to. Now, you can get a lot more specific than I've done here. You might actually just be focusing on one thing. So the more nuance, the more niche you can go, the better. In terms of film, well, I could break that down into writing. That is what I consider my biggest strength as a filmmaker, but I am also able to direct or to or to do cinematography. Same thing with teaching. Well, it's university level, actually, that I teach at. So I probably wouldn't be very good at teaching school children, but teaching at university level? Sure, I can teach international. And on the subject of languages, I also know, not fluently, I know a good amount of BSL British sign language. So that's the first circle done, right? What are my skills? So what do I enjoy? Well, in terms of film, what I enjoy most is actually writing, right? So that is my favorite skill from there. With web design, what I really enjoy from that kind of area is just digital exploration. I enjoy learning about new things, new sites, new apps, anything kind of like that that sparks my curiosity. Do I enjoy setting up film lights and working by myself with these studio lights and everything? No massively. So actually, that's something I'm not going to put here because I don't enjoy it. As much as I enjoy teaching, which I really do, I don't enjoy setting all this up by myself all the time. But thinking about teaching, what do I enjoy from it? What I really love are those times where I can use as a pen and paper to showcase something. So it's breaking down complex subjects. That is something I really enjoy. So whilst I might not enjoy setting up lighting for myself, of myself, I do love going into the classroom with other filmmakers and seeing what they create and helping and guiding things like that. Other things I enjoy? Well, I've actually really started enjoying going to the gym again. A long time away. That's something that I'm beginning to really find a love for. I used to enjoy running, but not so much anymore, so I'm going to leave that one off. Okay, so let's get into the lifestyle now. The lifestyle is what is going to help make or break some of these key choices. And for me, the lifestyle I want, this is not the lifestyle I have, what I want is complete freedom of location. In the last year or two, I found my commute to where I teach a university to be quite tough, and if I'm doing commercial work or making films, sometimes it kind of limits to where you can be. And there's places I want to see around the world, which is just, quite frankly, it's very hard to find the time for at the minute. So whatever brand I build, I want to have that freedom of location. I also want a minimal setup. The key thing is you need to have a business idea that you're not going to want to quit, something that you actually want to do, not going to resent, because then you're never going to do it. That's why all three of these elements are important. So I really want a minimal setup to make consistent progress and actually get where we want to quicker than having all these obstacles stopping us from doing it. I really want to be able to do a kind of fitness first lifestyle. And what that means in terms of building a brand is I either need a brand that puts fitness first or a brand that allows me to put fitness first. And they're slightly different things. So if I was to look at that personal versus business here, I'm thinking about fitness first. Let's say I became Nick Bear. I started my own YouTube channel showcasing my fitness journey and going through that way. That's great in one sense that it would force me to be turning up and showing up doing fitness. But as a business, if I started filming fitness content for other people, well, that doesn't put fitness first for me. So there may be ways I could start building fitness first products or whatever, but maybe I don't have the authority in that area. So really, that would kind of make the choice for me. If I wanted to have a brand based on fitness, at least right now, I feel like I would have to go down the personal route in order to utilize my filmmaking skills and things like that, because the other options is doing video services for fitness brands, and that does not put fitness first for me or starting products within the fitness space. And actually, I don't have that skill set. I'm not able to or don't have the access currently to go and create new products for fitness. So that's an example of how a lifestyle choice can start to influence where you go with your brand. The other lifestyle choice I want to kind of build into this is actually, for me, I do really like that kind of interaction with people, so I don't really want to lose that aspect. And that kind of means I don't really know how to phrase this. I'm going to say human first experience. I really enjoy meeting new people, connecting with new people from around the world, different communities. That's something I would love to do a bit more of. And so I need to have a brand that can facilitate that. So when we look at these things, if we were to look at our areas where it's just the two that overlap, on. These are what I like to think of as the danger zones where you are going to find things that you could do, but maybe you shouldn't do. So the example I gave you a minute ago of what are my skills and the lifestyle fitness first, I think, will I film fitness brands. But actually, as I described, that doesn't put fitness first for me, so it can't go in that one because at the end of the day, I'm going to become exhausted filming all of these bits of content. So another example is freedom of location. I really want to go everywhere around the world. I enjoy digital exploration, so that kind of digital nomad. But that doesn't really utilize my skill set. And actually, that's going to require quite a big jump for me. To go from I'm interested and I enjoy digital exploration to solely relying on that without utilizing my skills, is going to be really tough. And the last two here, teaching freedom of location, maybe I could go and teach around the world to all these different places. But do I enjoy that? Well, that's not really going to be something I am going to enjoy. I enjoy breaking down complex subjects, not necessarily just kind of doing the simple things over and over again. There are courses around the world to be able to go and teach English again and again and again at different countries. But for me, I don't necessarily enjoy that part of teaching. What I enjoy is getting stuck into the really in depth things about film. So a global teacher doesn't quite work in the traditional sense. So what is going to go in the middle here then? I've been giving this a lot of thought over the last year, not so much in this kind of black and white Vn diagram quickly drawn aspect, but thinking about all day, what am I good at? What do I enjoy? What are my lifestyle goals that I'm aiming for? Thinking on a daily basis and kind of making notes. And I have figured out what I want to do as a brand. And that thing is actually going to utilize, okay, digital exploration, teaching, film as a more general term. And the key lifestyle choice that has landed me here is this one, minimal setup. For a long time, I've been wanting to think about, well, how can I teach people around the world about film, but not in a way that's going to require me setting this up all the time and if I want to travel around the world, taking loans with me. And what I realized is there is an answer. And that thing that lives in here, let's just do a triangle for now. So we know what we're talking about. I come down here. So the holy triangle for me was this idea of minimal setup teaching film in a digital first way, that here is the brand I'm building towards. And in the middle, I realize exactly what I'm doing now. The thing that I enjoy doing the most is digital dynamic, can't spell dynamic breakdowns of film. So when I'm teaching, I have my iPad, and I will, in fact, I probably got one on here I can show you. So if I go into my drawings, Okay, so hopefully, if I hold it up, maybe you can see it a bit clearer. So I enjoy doing this sort of thing in class where if I'm trying to explain, for instance, Okay, well, what is a frame rate? I will draw it, and I will explain as I'm going through. And this will be live linked to the screen behind me. It's much more interesting and effective than presentations where you're actually drawing something as you go, especially when you start to find the tools that in a digital world can make things a little bit easier to show. So by doing this, I can show how frame rate changes. So I might have one frame a second. Or might have two frames a second, or might have 24 frames a second. This digital first breakdowns of things, I have two routes here, and the thing is, if I go down the business route with this, what that means is I'm setting up this as a okay, this is a film education platform or channel, whatever. That's fine, but these things exist already to some degree. And I don't necessarily think that's going to land quite as well, whereas here, for me, I am, as the things I can showcase, while I'm a BFI funded director. I'm working towards my first feature, and I am a university lecturer of film. That there and this here are two separations from many other YouTubers out there talking about film. So for me, I have a unique part as a personal brand that can really push me to achieving that audience versus going down the business route for this brand idea, I don't think we land quite as strong, where's the proof that I know what I'm talking about, or where's the interest in people to follow that story. So see if you can find what is that thing that you want to create. This might take more than 5 minutes. You know, I might take you like me, a year, two years to figure out. But this is the thinking behind it. So the next thing we're going to do is look at how do we validate that idea? 5. Checking How Viable Your Idea Is: So you've maybe got some flavor of the sort of brand you want to build. We need to validate three things. The first thing that we want to validate is, is it feasible? Is it actually possible to do? The next thing we want to think about, has it worked before? And the third thing we want to figure out, is there an audience? Now, I believe that there's pretty much an audience for everything out there. It's more about finding that audience, and a key thing is the more nuanced you can go, the better. So for me, I'm focusing on in depth breakdowns of complex things to do with film, specifically aiming it towards a degree level, but I could kind of start a bit simpler and kind of build up from college level and really take people through. In fact, that is what I'm doing. Now, something I should have add here is, is it feasible for you? So looking at these three things, and I'll use me as an example, the first thing I looked at for Is it feasible for me is the tools. Do I have the tools? Now, at first, I thought, Well, of course, I do. I use it in the classroom every day. But I realized it's slightly different when you're teaching online because you can't just point things on a board. So what I did is I started by screen recording my iPad, and when I watched it back, I went, Hmm, it does just about work, but actually the two problems were the size of it, because it's this big, I end up having to zoom out and zoom in quite a lot. And people watching on a phone, I think that's actually fine, and most people are watching things on the phone these days. But people are doing film degree stuff and they're really trying to understand, they might be watching it on their laptop. And it's made me think maybe I need a bigger screen to be writing on, so I'm not having to zoom out and zoom in quite so much. The second thing is, when I write on my iPad, it doesn't show up on a screen where that pen is. So I realized, yes, it's feasible. I have almost the right tools, but maybe not quite the right tools, so I need to build into that. But that's what I've been doing. I've been testing other tools to see if it will work, and it will, so great, happy days. Let me think about time. Do we feasibly have the time to do this brand? And that means if you do, great, crack on. If you don't, you need to set out the journey. My calendar year has been horrific, to be honest, so I've not had the time, but I've built in the plan for me to take this brand and target it around September when the new academic year starts, although I will be putting it out sooner than that. I want to already have things in place, the channel up and running, and videos on there. So come September, it feels like a home of information already there. If the brand you're building feels like it will take just too much time than what you have, two options here is you need to find something else or hopefully, find a way to make the time. I would suggest listening to Nick Baer's podcast. He's currently doing, maybe finished now a series about talking all through his journey of building the brand. And it's really useful to see how he had to try to factor in time around his job in the army before then going all in and really committing full time. So that's the second thing you need to think about feasibility is the time. And the third thing is obviously cost. With all these things, none of these things are you should or shouldn't do the idea. It's more making you think about, okay, well, how am I going to do it? When am I going to do it? Me, it's a very low cost idea I'm setting up. YouTube is free. I have the knowledge. I have some equipment that does the job. I have maybe other bits of equipment that will do the job better that I can buy, but nothing too expensive. I would love to have a studio I owned one day, but actually, it's never been something I've actively worked towards because I know the costs of it are possibly going to outstrip my enjoyment of it. So there I'm kind of like, Well, does it get me to the lifestyle I want? No. So should I really endeavor for that cost? Not really. Whereas this, I can get the lifestyle I want. I enjoy it, and the cost is a lot lower. It's a clear win. So the second one, has it worked before? And this doesn't mean it has to have a successful brand already out there doing it. In fact, sometimes the best brands, there is no other company doing it out there. But it's more about has it worked for you or someone else. So, I know, for me, I was looking at this, and I've gone, Okay, well, there's Cahn Academy. It works as a digital format. No question. It is there. Then I look at my teaching in class. So the start of the year is when I started doing this. I've been relying on it ever since because it has proven to be such a great tool that really simplifies things for students and engages them. So I know it works for me as well. And the third thing is there an audience. You can do this either very organically or a bit more scientifically. So you could look at stats and data. So I could say, Okay, well, there's 20,000 film students give or take around the country. That tells me there is a potential audience there, but it doesn't tell me that they're going to engage with this type of content. But something else I realized is one of my best performing videos, and the best performing video I've made a long time ago when I worked at a company was curriculum related. So I made a video about production design or meson scene. And that video does really well because students are searching for it on YouTube. And YouTube is the biggest search engine out there after Google. Therefore, I know, well, there is an audience for this. They've already proven to me that they're looking for this stuff. And I know because I've looked for this stuff s in learning my craft, YouTube is a place I go to. But what currently doesn't exist that gives me this kind of new idea, new creative is this kind of through thread here, there's never been a film version of Kahn Academy, and given my unique positioning, I think I could be the best person to do it. That's actually a really important thing. Why you? You need to have no doubt in your mind that you are the best person to do this. And this is almost like I guess you could do a kind of two person Vn diagram, what my audience needs. And what makes me unique. So your brand should sit right there in the middle. What my audience needs is they need difficult film concepts broken down. They need it to be easily found on YouTube. They need trust in that the person that they're listening to is actually a working professional. This is something that I've definitely experienced at the university where I'm very fortunate that the students I get a lot of students coming up to me within the first week saying, Oh, students in the above have told us that you're really great in this and we'd love to know this, et cetera, et cetera. There is trust in the teacher because I work in the industry. So that's important to my audience. Similarly, what makes me unique? Same thing, right? Well, I do work in the industry. That doesn't necessarily make me unique to other YouTubers, but I am also a degree level teacher. So I understand what's on the curriculum. I understand what students need to do for their assessments. Difficult film concepts broken down. What makes me unique? An ability to simplify difficult film science. So when I started, I would just carry around I had, like, a faus there. I carried that around with me everywhere I went to a class because there were no whiteboards. Everything was digital, and I hadn't figured out at that point how to do a digital whiteboard on screen. So I just took that round with me and did it in classroom. Then when I got my remarkable, and then when I got my iPad, I started doing it digitally through the screen. And the first thing I did it with was explaining how celluloid film is exposed, talking about photons and exposure, silver his and all this stuff, so a lot of film students who are there to create art, and not thinking about chemical compounds. Being able to break it down through pictures and through drawing was the key to getting them to understand it. And you can see how really these all kind of answer each other in this section, in the brand. Your brand is where you prove to yourself that what your audience needs only you can provide it in the way you're providing it. So that is how I figured out. Okay, this is a viable brand idea. Alright. In the next video, we're going to move a little bit away from this kind of conceptual element of finding your idea more into actually practically, what do you need to do? 6. Vision & Mission (Empower Class Recap): Okay, so you know what you want to do for your brand. You've proven to yourself that you're the right person to do it. Well, now we've actually got to figure out, Okay, well, what does my brand look and feel like, and how do I get there? But before you go ahead and think about anything to do with logos or anything like that, you really need to have your vision and your mission sorted out. I might not be the artist that many of you are, but I can do a little bit highlighting. Oh, even that I messed up. Never mind. Doesn't matter. Okay, this is where if you've done my other branding class about empowering your brand, you can skip this bit. Just make sure that you have your vision sorted out. If not, don't worry. I will simplify it for now, and then you can go watch that class in fall and really get stuck into this. So your vision and your mission, you could consider these the same thing. That's fine. You might have just one of these. That's fine. You don't need to have both. You don't need to have them separated. Many brands will have a vision and a mission that kind of say the same thing because they kind of are the same thing. But the way to think about it is your vision is why you are doing it. So it's the why and the what. And the mission is more the how and the what. I know put what twice there, but that's kind of where this overlap comes. So we're figuring out why does our brand exist and what do we want our brand to achieve and how are we going to get there. And again, for those of you that took my class, you remember the ways we did this was through something called the seven ys, and then we did the rocket system. The rocket system, just to recap for you. If I do my little rocket, we're always starting with why as our base. Then we got into our how, and then we got into our what. My rocket was a lot nicer on my last class, but, you know, it's fine. So how do we figure out our why? This is where the seven Ys came in where basically, just to remind you if you haven't done it, you start off with just I want to sell water and cans was the example in my last class. In this case, it would be, I want to make YouTube videos about complex film subjects. You have to then ask yourself why seven times, and you are always answering the one above. Now, we're not really focusing on your lifestyle goals here. We're more focusing on the brand goals. Was brand ideas. So, in my case, I want to make YouTube videos, demystifying complex film topics. Why do I want to do that? I would say traditional methods don't work. Why? Then I'll answer that one. Film progresses rapidly, blah, blah, blah. You'd go all the way through, you'd ask yourself why seven times, and at the end, you have a summary, and that summary, you turn into more of a aspirational sentence. That becomes your vision. Now, if I look at BPN's mission, it is to equip people with the tools, resources, and community to go one more every day. They haven't necessarily put their vision on here, so maybe their vision is to go one more, right? The mission is leading into the vision. You can see the mission explains how they're providing tools and resources and a community, but really the vision is to be able to go one more every time. So the way that looks for them is, okay, how are they providing it through their resources and community and tools, while their what becomes their products, their YouTube videos, their Instagram community, these events that they put on. All of that sits in their what, the how is a bit more general, and the vision is you can go one more. So you're looking to build your vision and your mission for your brand idea because as I explained in that other class, your vision underpins everything you should be doing and pushing as your brand, your brand voice, your brand content, all of that comes through your vision. So I've just spent the last 15 minutes going through mine and figuring this out for me because I haven't done this yet. And actually, what I ended up doing is having to do it twice because the first time, actually, I didn't think it was kneeling in the correct way. So if I just kind of hold it up, then you'll be able to see it, hopefully, and this won't look too weird as I talk through it. But I started off really thinking about more of a comparison between what I'm doing and then traditional universities and why it's better. And that works to some degree, but that A could alienate people, people who work in universities or study at university, because there are some incredible filmmakers out there at universities, teaching and learning. And it's also doesn't really inspire much. It's kind of a more negative frame than a positive frame. So I went through it again. And this time, the difference is, I lent more about, okay, what is it for the user? What's their benefit? And I got to so they can make films without the expensive paycheck for universities, and why? So the world is richer in stories and more equal for opportunities. Why? So the industry begins to tell more original stories. Why? Because I'm bored of the same stories again and again and again, and AI is threatening to make that worse. Why? Well, life is really cool. And I think we should explore that more rather than through digital rehashing of what's already come before. So my summary was, I want to create YouTube videos, breaking down complex film subjects so anyone anywhere has the knowledge to make films and improve the industry's filmmaking landscape. But to turn that into a vision, I made my vision is to break down industry gatekeeping and prove to the world that the best filmmakers and the best stories can come from anywhere and anyone. And as I explained to my other class in more detail, really, this is important, so you can always pivot. I could make all of these YouTube videos and then decide, actually, I want to do a film festival or film fund or something different. Now I can pivot without it feeling weird. And so my mission, my how, my what? Well, how I'm going to provide higher education level filmmaking knowledge through YouTube videos and maybe some searchable digital resources. And what will that look like? Well, I went through the other week and just put out all the different ideas I could do for YouTube videos. And normally, when I'm thinking about my own personal YouTube channel, I find that a little bit hard, but within one night, I had 253 video ideas, which for me is a great litmus test to say, Yep, this is a viable brand idea. So go and do this, and then we'll come back and we'll talk about your target audience and where to find it. 7. Understand Your Target Audience: Now I know I promised you my handwriting would get neater. I'm sorry. I feel like I may have lied. It actually feels like it's gotten worse. I'm a teacher. What do you expect? That's how it goes. So next thing with our brand that we have to think about, because this helps us define the voice we want to talk with is a target audience, who we targeting and where those people going to be? The part of building a brand is knowing, where are your people? Where is that tribe of people interested in your brand? Now, you could pay lots of people lots of money, and Facebook marketing, ads and all of that, will try and help figure out who the correct people are for your product, for your brand. But you can do it yourselves a little bit. If you just think about, well, who's interested in your project and what do they do and where do they live and build up that picture. So again, I'll take my brand idea as an example, but please do this with your own. So think about my target audience. Let's to kind of build up a little fake house, I guess. It's not the best house, I know. I apologize. Okay. Now, what we're doing is we're thinking about all the rooms that our target audience might be in. And this is broken down into, well, where do they live? The living room? Where do they study? Where do they socialize? Maybe the kitchen, right? And escape. Hey, I've broken down into these four sections for a very important reason. I we'll start with socialize because socializing is how your brand grows. How are these people communicating, the people that you are targeting. When I think about the person that I'm targeting, and I could write this down, I'm thinking about most likely young but not always young or at least inexperienced filmmakers. Now, these people, they might be uni students. They might be independent living somewhere completely alone, everyone else is working in law and they're just focusing on art. There could be people looking for a career change. There's lots of different ways this person might look. The more easily accessible one for me right now, just to focus on is this little area. The young filmmakers, maybe university students, maybe not, but someone with Internet access, for sure. So let's start with socialize, then, because that's where the word is going to get spread. The places that generally speaking, filmmakers and young people, university students might be socializing. From what I've found, it's actually, surprisingly, Instagram groups. I presume that everyone would have WhatsApGroups. Turns out Instagram groups are way more popular with the younger generation than I'd realize. But also, we could have WhatsAp groups. But also, importantly, class parties, corridors. In my case, there very much is a digital and a physical socializing room. And that's really important for me because it helps me know, well, I could push 100 pounds into Facebook ads, but what's the point if I could get students talking about the videos I'm making in corridors in parties, in classrooms, on Instagram groups and WhatsApp groups, word of mouth will spread because they're also socializing with other filmmakers, other young filmmakers, other university students. There is way more leverage for me in word of mouth and focusing on these different smaller social groups than I would ever get through using Facebook ads because from my audience, they're probably not even on Facebook. So that's one aspect. Now, I've put study here that might actually be for you work, or it might be that thing you're focusing on. So maybe it's the gym or whatever that unique things for your brand. But for me, for study, where are they studying? So yes, they're studying in libraries, but they're actually studying on YouTube more than anywhere else. That is the biggest place to study. So I know YouTube videos are going to be a good way to go. Maybe books. Maybe I could write a filmmaking book that gets in at university libraries. Fantastic. That's another way in for me. Now, something I know many students prefer is independent study. Doesn't mean people don't group study, but from what I've gathered, independent is a way more popular method. They study by being hands on, and that means film sets. So I look at this and go, Okay, well, I know I'm gonna be on YouTube. If I can also get my videos onto film sets, somehow, great, if I can get something into libraries, brilliant. And I'm probably targeting the independent person. I'm not targeting groups. I'm not trying to necessarily build a community. Maybe I will. Maybe that's the thing. Maybe it is all these independent people want to find a common group, a community. But actually, for me, building a community, which is great for many, many businesses, it is not right now that important. I'm focusing more on the individual and the community aspect. Alright, where do they live? Well, they need to live somewhere with the Internet, right? But they're probably also living in halls of residence if they're university students. I imagine they're living in cities, by and large, but importantly, their hometown could be anywhere, right? Many students are international. In fact, a lot of students, if I was to pin it down, I'd say many of those students come from China. So maybe I should be focusing on also turning my videos into Chinese into Mandarin, Cantonese. And within that, I should be aware that YouTube, there's a different YouTube version in China, so perhaps I need to be looking at that getting onto there. And the last base I've forgotten about because I don't really use it is Tik Tok. So I know, Okay, for me, YouTube and TikTok are really important. Instagram is really important. Facebook doesn't matter. I don't need to think about it. Snapchat, I don't know. I don't know our students learning through Snapchat. I've not ever been told that, but maybe they are. Maybe I need to look at that. But rather than spread myself too thin, what I'm trying to do is hone in. And where do they escape? How do they switch off? And they switch off at the cinema on YouTube, parties going home, et cetera, et cetera. What I know from this is if I'm building a brand, I'm not just creating a brand. I want that brand to grow, to build. I need to be focusing more on this kind of word of mouth aspect, looking at YouTube and TikTok as places to get that content up. But something else I'm seeing here as a sort of different trend is home. And if there's home, and if these people are maybe going to university, well, perhaps this also ties into the library idea. On top of my videos, I could have something that is aimed more at parents for their children who want to become filmmakers. I could have a second thing that grows, a second what? But my vision is always the same. To make it clear, I believe filmmakers can come from anywhere, and I'm trying to provide all the tools to do that. Right now that's free videos on YouTube, could also be a book that's going to take your student where they need to go. Maybe it's a ten pound gift voucher. That gift voucher gets the something that also works in these other ways. But figuring out your target audience is actually not just who that person is, but it's where do they communicate? How do they communicate? And where do they exist outside of just the obvious social environment? Where are the other roots in that we can get in through the main way we're going to market, which for me is word of mouth for you might be completely different. But I go TikTok videos, getting them into YouTube sounds like a good avenue, maybe a book or something down the line, aiming at home and escape. And when we're talking about escape, something I haven't put is fiction books, right? I need to lean in a little bit more perhaps into my own filmmaking thing. I make films. I should provide a platform or maybe for the students to upload. There's going to be a place students can upload their films like YouTube or I have some sort of submit your film for the YouTube channel to go on there. So this is places I can start thinking about my brand growing. In the next video, we'll talk a little bit about strategy on what to do first. 8. Build a Pyramid: 'The One Thing': Is a really good book, and it is called one thing. And it talks about the benefit of focusing on one thing rather than trying to spread yourself too thin. If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be this. And it's a bit of advice I'm terrible at, which is why I'm giving it to you because I recognize it in myself as a weakness. The more you focus in on one thing, the stronger that thing will be. And that applies whether you're talking about going more nuanced in terms of your niche, you're really getting specific. So perhaps my thing does become just for filmmaking university students, or it does become just for filmmakers who are at university, but it's more about well, what are you making? What are these things? In the last video, I mentioned maybe a book or something. Does that mean I should now start writing the book as well as making the videos? No, definitely not. You want to focus on one thing at a time and think of it like a mountain or pyramid where until that first basal layer is there, it's hard for things to sack on top. Otherwise, if you put a bit here, then a bit here will fall down and you just end up same place flat at the bottom. You haven't built your structure. No matter what you're doing, whether it's a personal brand or a business brand, there will be the obvious places you're thinking of like TikTok or YouTube. Maybe you're also thinking about blogs. You might be thinking about doing digital products or even physical products. You might really start to expand all the possible things you can do. I totally understand. I'm the same, and it's hard to not do it. But the key thing is you're going to focus on one of them. I know how hard that is. I know it cannot always be the most exciting thing in your mind. So perhaps you do need a smaller minor secondary thing to kind of bounce between. But even if you have that, it should kind of link in to the one thing. So to give you an exact example, for me, right? I've talked about YouTube videos. I've talked about TikTok videos. I've talked about a book. Other things that I've thought about would be Lutz, which is, if you don't know, it's like a digital product you can sell. I have thought about some other physical products to do with film. But when I look at these things, if I was to be realistic about it, I don't have, as things stand, the knowledge or the skill set or maybe the drive or the connections or anything to start doing physical products, anything to do with film. And I know people who have done it, but for me, it's not something that right now I can do quick and easy. Lots I could do. I could go and do it. But every time I have, what's happened is I've got lost in the weeds a little bit and end up spending ages doing that. Now, my personal website is an example of where I've kind of overstretch myself where you can see, I have a blog, I have my own films, and I have my personal YouTube channel, and on there, I've got a notion template you can download. I said I'll be adding some uts and some pitch decks and all these things, and it all ties into one place. But I have struggled to keep going with everything I was planning to do because I spread myself too thin. And you could see this whole endeavor as another thing to spread myself thin over. But I see this very much as, like, the future of where I'm going with things. So I can kind of park things and focus over here. So the book right now, I don't know how to do this. Maybe you just kind of like that. Right now, the book is not the right way to go. It is possibly a really strong choice. But the thing I have to think about is it is hard to get a student. They're not going to be looking for book. They're going to be looking at YouTube videos. A book will come later because that book, it could be a personal book or it could be a film book. I could write a book about filmmaking, get it going and whatever, but the profit margins in books isn't that great. And actually, students aren't going to be likely to pick up that film book without some sort of encouragement. Same thing with a personal book. Right now, who am I to most people? There's no point me writing that book. My life is not interesting enough for people to want to go out and buy it. Who knows? Maybe one day. So then I come to YouTube videos and Tik Tok. And you could look at this and go, Well, they're two separate things, so I should do one of them, or they're almost one thing. And the way I'm thinking of this is Tik Tok. Sure, you have your 60 seconds vertical videos that brings them into YouTube. The slide issue I have is the layout, the aspect ratio. The aspect ratio for YouTube, 16 by nine, the aspect ratio for Tik Tok, nine by 16. And I did think about, Okay, well, maybe I just film it so I have on YouTube, half of it is my face, and the other half is the screen, then on TikTok, I can just use that screen piece. But that brings me back to the problem of lifestyle. Suddenly, I am then having to think about lighting, camera, all these things outside of the simplicity of what I'm going for. So I can't do that. And I can't necessarily just take a quick cut of what I've done for TikTok. So I now have to think about this as two separate things. Almost living together. Now, I haven't quite figured this out yet. I know for sure. I know that I can get these YouTube videos going. I can do it quickly. TikTok is something different for me. So what I'm going to do is focus very much on YouTube. But if and when I get a little bit bored and I'm finding myself itching to do something else. Well, I can come over here and figure out, Okay, how can I translate some of what I've done to TikTok? Because it all feeds together in one thing. If you're doing a blog, just do a blog if you're doing a book, just do a book. Whatever it is, focus on that one thing. Otherwise, you won't have the impact because consistency beats novelty every time. And the more consistent you are, the more that thing builds and builds and builds. Having really kind of got back onto YouTube the last month or so, I've noticed a good trend, a good improvement on all my analytics, simply because I've been pushing and focusing on that one thing. Do the YouTube, get it going. And now I'm making new skill share class. I have three different skill share classes that I want to make. So I'm looking at this, Okay, this is one of three next week, do another one, one after do another one. This is the one thing I'm focusing on for now for this season of life. Next season, I'll focus on that. I have been incredibly bad at following this advice. So do as I say, not as I do. But the evidence when I have done this has proven to be astronomically proven. It's the right thing to do. And if you don't know which one to pick, come back to this page. It is all about, well, where is your audience going to be? Let's start there. If they're going to be readers, great, work on a blog. If they're going to be TikTok people or Instagram or Facebook or perhaps it's art galleries or illustration, children's books, wherever that place is, that's your place you want to start. For me, it is YouTube. That is the place people are looking. TikTok will help me get people there later, but YouTube is a place to start for my videos, from my brand. 9. Brand Guidelines: Key Tips: So this video is about designing the brand. Now, I'm making a whole other series about this specifically because there's a lot to go through, and I don't want to do a disservice by trying to get it all done in here. But the key thing to understand is you are trying to create consistency, and that comes through a few things. So we have brand colors and fonts, imagery, tone of voice, which I sort of tapped into my last skill share class about branding, but I'll go into a lot more about that on my next one. And you might also consider placement. And that's about how all these things sit together, layouts, things like that. So with the colors, again, I will be going into a lot more detail on this in a future class. But what you are looking to do is figure out the hex codes of your brands. A hex code, if you don't know, every single variation of color on a digital screen has a unique hex code. And there are online websites where you can grab a pen, click a color, and it will tell you what that hex code is. If you know that hex code, then anytime you are creating something, rather than going, it was kind of this blue, you just put in the hex code, and it's the exact same color. Within color, you normally have primary and secondary you might have accent colors. And then for logos or anything like that, you'll have a black and a white version. Which will be a PNG that does not have a background. If you know Canva, anytime you export something on Canva, we will give you the option as long as you are PNG to export it without a background. A JPEG won't do that. If you're more advanced and using photoshops and things like that, I presume you probably already know how to export transparent background. But generally speaking for a background or a logo, try not to have one. So really, as a minimum, you're looking for your main color, a secondary color, maybe an accent for special things, and then a black and white version of your logo if you have one or your brand name or something like that. I'll just do this, try and make it a little bit easier. I know it's a little bit crowded on here. I'll come down. I'll do fonts down here. And again, I will go through this properly in future class. But what you need to establish is your H one font. And please note as a quick tip, if you are building a website, it's important for search engine optimization, SEO. There should only really be one H one font on your homepage. And if it comes up really big and you go, Oh, that's too big, and then you choose H two, that's the wrong way to go. You should just go into the setting to make H one smaller because H two is more like your subheadings. This is there to give Google things to understand about where things are, what's important, how to read it. For you, you need to establish, ideally, the difference between your headings and your paragraph fonts. And you might even. So if you look at Nick Bear, what I really love is even the subtitles on their YouTube page has this font type. So you want a headings font and a paragraph font and a subtitles. And for your paragraph, it's really important. It is readable. However it looks, it has to be clear enough to read. Whereas for your headings and your subheadings, it needs to feel resonant with your target audience. Whatever that feeling is of your brand, if it's fitness, it might be quite like I don't know what the word is, like, cubic and strong and bold. If it's a children's education brand, then it might be quite light and curvy and all these different things. So, you need to pick your font. Imagery is more about the tone. Do you have lots of bright images, or lots of dark images? Do you just have big wide landscapes or do you have lots of in detail things? And what you want to do to establish that is create a vision board of the sort of vibes that you like from other brands. Tone of voice is the terminology, the wording you're using. I get stuck way more into that in the next school share class. Placement is guidance on where your logos and your text and things should sit generally on an image if those things kind of overlap. A good example of this is actually Skillshare brand guidelines. You can find Skill shares brand guidelines online. Just type in Skill share brand guidelines, and you will find there guidance on colors, on fonts, on imagery, on tone of voice, on placement. The difference between someone starting out as a freelancer and someone building a brand is this. It's the consistency in everything you're doing, especially if you aren't going down a personal brand route, you're going down a business brand route, a corporate brand brand route. These things become instrumental in creating consistency across the whole brand. Now, you can get stuck forever trying to create this. My advice to you, especially, you might as well do this now before my next Skillshare class comes out, is Trial and Eror. There's a great book called Black Box Thinking talks all about how much quicker and more successful you will be through iteration and trying to get better every time, rather than trying to plan perfection straightaway. Good example for me, I spent two, three years making as many short films as I could afford and had the time to not great, but all those short films were the building blocks that got me to making my Beer F funded film. If I hadn't made them, I wouldn't have had the skill set to make my Beer F funded film. And it's the same with the brand. If you want to figure this stuff out, get it wrong a couple of times. That's fine. And then figure out what's working, what's reaching your audience. Okay, that sort of thing did well, that didn't lean more there less here. 10. Choosing Your Brand Name: So one of the important things we need to do, and the one thing that I forgot is the brand's name. And really, this is completely free, completely up to you how you do this. There's no right or wrong way. There are some trends, though, that can help you figure that brand name out. If it's a personal brand, it is likely just to be your name. Let's say we're doing a business brand. Well, the obvious ways to go about it is either a surname, what the product does, or something metaphorical. And something to add about what it does is it might be that you want to give off a sense of authority as an expert on the matter. So I'll give you some examples just to kind of spike your creativity. So your surname, let's start with the obvious McDonald's. That's the surname of the brothers who found it. But going more on to Nick Bear, who we've been talking about recently, that surname is Bear. His brand name is Bear performance. Nutrition or BPN. So there's a combination of its surname and what it does. Metaphorical we have Apple. Why? Steve Jobs apparently just liked apples and what they meant. But then you have Nike, which is named after the goddess of Victory. So there's that kind of sense of linking into the brand. In terms of what it does, there's Microsoft, which is two words. We've got software and micro chip, microcomputer, I think it is. So a combination of two words there. So how you do it, there's no right and there's no wrong way. This is really up to you. For me, I actually don't want my surname to be there. And given the kind of context of what I'm doing, personally, I feel like this is more important, what it does and an authority. And metaphorical, there probably is something I could come up with, but I want clarity in order to be found on YouTube for my specific educational goals. So if I take that approach and I think about what it does, what I'm doing, well, one thing is I'm teaching. And if we go off the words to do with teaching, we have educate educator, um lecturer is another one. In fact, off of that, we have things like professor, which technically is an actual level of qualification that I don't have because it's different in America and UK, and the way the systems work. But it doesn't stop many, especially international students saying, Professor. Okay, then we've got film. So I could think of worst with film could be celluloid, lens, director, and I can now start to piece together some sort of brand name idea. And actually, I had already been thinking about this a little bit, and I had quite liked the idea of professor film or prof film. I like it because it's kind of given me the Professor Green, like, mind link. And I think, as well, it very clearly states what it's about. It's someone who understands film very well, talking about film. Maybe that will change. Maybe it'll become Professor filmmaker or something maybe more metaphorical down the line. A brand name can change. You can develop it over time. The thing to know, though, is when you set up your company, and it's different in different countries, so I can't just give you one way of doing this. But in the UK, at least, you have to register, if you want to set up a brand properly as a business, as a limited company, you have to give a name, and that name has to be available. So that's why it's important not just for your brand, but also the law to figure out your brand name. And if it's your name should be nice and easy. If it's not then don't rush this, give it some time. For me, I have been thinking about this a little while. So Professor film is where I've landed. But yeah, they're the ways to start thinking about it, and maybe just have a think about what you like. What does metaphorically represent your aspirations with the brand is about victory, about growth. What are those things? 11. Recap & Closing Tips: So we do quick little recap. What we've done is hopefully we've figured out what is our brand going to be about? What is the brand. And from there, hopefully by now, you have some sense of if you want to build a personal brand or a business brand for lack of a better word. If not, it's fine. Things can change. Again, I encourage you to go look at Nick Beer. It's a good example of how he started as a personal brand has become more of a business brand through PPN. But there is actually still a tie there. You don't have to have a clear separation. It might just help you figure out what you want to do later on with your tone of voice. Second thing we did was figure out, okay, why us? Why are we the right person to do this? That's important to keep you going. The third thing is we've got our vision and our mission sorted out. After that, we looked at our target audience and why that's important, specifically knowing, Okay, how do we need to approach marketing the brand? Then we looked at what you need in order to do your brand guidelines. And as I said in the last video, I have a full class coming this soon, but if you want to get ahead of the game, you can. You can start doing that now. You can create it on Canva or on anything you want, really. Places to look for fonts would be Google fonts, I'd recommend, colors just go with the ones that seem to work for your brand. There are nuances to color. There are, of course, themes and moods. So yellow generally means happy. Blue might be seen as sad or active. Blue and red are actually seen as very good conversion colors. So when you look at fitness, you'll see a lot of blue and red and black in there. Compare that to children's TV show, there might be a lot of yellow and pink and purple. If you want to get more into color theory, then there's so much information on that already out there, and it's better to look into your niche specifically, rather than me trying to give you a one stop shop. But yeah, think about your colors strategically if you can. We also before some of that, we talked about the one thing, why it's important to do the one thing? But the final step that's really important is to just go do it. So often we just plan and we design and we try and build this future for ourselves without actually doing the thing, it's way more exciting to plan and create and think about what it could be rather than to go, Okay, I've now got to go record 200 videos. I've now got to go do that thing. I understand. It's totally human. But this brand will never be a brand. It will only ever be an idea if we don't just go start that thing. So, the project for this class is a promise and a deadline for you to have this thing here, this record of you saying, Okay, this is the brand I want to create. I want to have created it by this day. I wanted to have launched it by this day. I want to have succeeded at this thing by this day. And I will, to do this. I will put down my own deadline, my own promise to myself, and to you about my brand that I am building. But otherwise, I hope you've enjoyed it. It's been lovely to see you again and hopefully you've enjoyed seeing me again. And I look forward to seeing you soon on that brand design video. So thanks very much and have a lovely, lonely day. He