Brand and Butter
The straight-talking branding podcast for leaders who refuse to settle.
Brand and Butter delivers no-BS advice on how psychology, strategy, and design create brands that work. Host Tara Ladd, founder of Your One & Only brand design studio, breaks down the real influence and power of branding – how understanding behaviour and cultural shifts can transform how people see, think, and choose.
Sometimes funny, always honest, never dull. This is the podcast that cuts through industry jargon to talk about what actually makes brands stick.
Tara Ladd is the founder of Your One and Only, who design brands that breathe with culture through psychology, strategy, and design.
Brand and Butter
Why Being Different in Business Costs More (And Why It's Worth It)
Every business challenging the status quo pays hidden costs that traditional businesses don't face - but this "tax" is actually an investment in market leadership. In this episode, Tara shares her journey from seeing inequities at her old agency to building YO&O as a wellness-focused brand studio, revealing how paying the price for being different created her unique competitive advantage.
This episode is perfect for any neurodivergent entrepreneurs, wellness brands, and any business trying to do things differently (even if it feels expensive).
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you're listening to Brandon butter a straight-talking occasionally in your face. No BS branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. Here for those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing associations, consumer behavior and design thinking can impact what people say, think and feel. I'm your host, tara Ladd, the sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable and often unapologetically blunt founder and creative director of Brand and Design Agency, your one and only. Hey, welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter.
Speaker 1:I had a bit of a gosh speak too fast of an epiphany a couple of weeks ago and I was like on my personal brand page or my personal profile, I talk about a lot of things that mean a lot to me, and that's in women's health. It's also in you know, women's health. It's also in you know, systemic issues like neurodiversity and disability and talking about, you know, inclusivity, dei and a lot of people like a dei being diversity, equity and inclusion. For those playing at home, I said that at a speaking conference. I did the well, it wasn't a conference, it was a like a breakfast, and a lot of people actually didn't know what DEI meant. So I think it's important to bring that up. I think, if you're throwing the word out quite a bit, or the acronym people. Just, I just assume people know what it means, but clearly they don't, so I need to make sure that I'm saying that. But it's something that I've always stood for, something that has been basically the foundation of your One and Only, from the start, and, to be fair, I only realised that, like two years ago when I started your One and Only. I started because I saw the inequities of gender within my studio and my studio was quite culturally aligned, like we were pretty good. So if we were like that, then we were talking 2000, pre-2017. It was, yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1:So I was in my 20s and I just watched a lot of these women coming in and out of the studio. Well, well, not in and out, we had a really good retention rate, but it was they would by in and out. I mean, they would leave to have a child and then come back in and it was like they weren't the same person anymore. It was really weird. I just watched the way that people would treat them post-child. They were like considered mum first, business person, person second, even inside the dynamic of the studio it was anyway, and I was just like what's going on here like how is this? How are the guys not being treated like this? And yeah, it was just. I wouldn't say it was sexist, would you? I don't know, it's really hard to explain, because the culture was good. It was just, I guess, a sign of the times, and I was just one of the only women in the creative team, to be fair, and so I saw these things happen.
Speaker 1:Then I saw, you know, the inequities of going in from southwestern Sydney versus living in the city and just the just the things that people would say about living, you know, outside of the CBD versus living inside the CBD, and it was interesting the dynamic there of how people saw themselves better than other people purely by their postcode, to which most of them were renting, by, by the way, which I found really interesting. So clearly I'm finding lots of things interesting. I guess it's just when I look at the conversations that were at play or the dynamic that was happening, you can see why I kind of there was these micro reasons and I couldn't put my finger on the reason, and it was, yeah, a lot of these little things on top of that. One of the reasons was I living out here meant that I couldn't really do a paid, you know, free internships, and that's what a lot of kids that had parents that were, you know, had money, were able to do. They, they were able to allow them to go and work for free while their parents supported them, and unfortunately, I was in a predicament to do that. So I wasn't, you know, able to do that, so I missed out on potential opportunities because I wasn't able to do unpaid internships. So it was always leaving work.
Speaker 1:You need two years experience when you literally just step out of the college doors and I had to really hustle to get in and I just remember thinking that this is just so bullshit. Like what if there is just some amazing creative from outside of the postcode era era area and they're being limited because they simply come from a different household? So I saw these and I didn't know what it was back then. Right, it was 21 years old, but I just remember thinking this is shit. And so, yeah, I built my business. It was remote, I was going to have flexibility built in, and that's essentially what the foundation of this business is, and even the people that we work with, the type of businesses that we work with, and it's how it has been, and obviously the last couple of years, especially since becoming a mother, I've noticed a lot of dynamics at play that I hadn't seen prior.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like that lived experience of doing the things and realizing what's behind the curtain when you're actually thrown into the deep end, and this has happened to me on a few different fronts now. So, starting a business as a woman, you notice there's a big difference between if a guy started a business and you technically need to work a little bit harder. There's a reputation that you need to uphold and you find that there are a few doors that are closed, that are otherwise open to guys, and now sometimes they are not intentional, to be completely fair. It's just kind of like oh, if you have someone that you can refer to someone else, they just kind of refer their friends or people that they know, and that's just kind of the way it is. There's essentially like the bro code, and I've been finding that that's a lot harder to do when women have notoriously been left out of leadership roles or haven't been in those positions. It's kind of new to see them kind of coming into those spaces. So there's just not a wider range of area for you to kind of coming into those spaces, so there's just not a wider range of area for you to kind of enter.
Speaker 1:That doesn't mean you can't don't think that that's the case at all, but that's what I personally found, watching different dynamics play out, and then I also noticed that obviously after you have a child, that there is a different level of commitment that people, society, requires of you as a, as a woman, versus what they require of you as a man. Um, and that's obviously something that we see play out often. But I'm also neurodivergent and I also see their the ableism play out quite a bit with people and what they say and even what they're not meaning to say but unintention, unintentionally say it, which means that there are so many unconscious biases at play with the way people make choices, choose who they work with. And yeah, it was the other and obviously having I don't know if you know this it's Donate Life Week, so I feel like I would throw this in there my son, ari, at nine, eight months old, nearly nine had a liver transplant because he was born with a chronic liver disease called biliary atresia, which meant that, yes, he required a liver transplant prior to the age of two.
Speaker 1:So I've been through that route of dealing with disability and dealing with the system, especially during COVID and the rhetoric I should say on and and what people have been saying about that, and yeah, it's been a really interesting time. A lot of eye-opening experiences, but then also, as you're dealing with your own health issues medical gaslighting and I have gotten to the point where I'm like I'm not dealing with this shit anymore and I was very loud. I'm very loud about women's health, I'm very loud about disability and inclusivity and I'm very, very loud about social justice and inequities. So you know racial discrepancies, you know LGBTQIA, all of these things Like. Yeah, if you follow my personal page'll know what I mean.
Speaker 1:But it's at the crux of everything and this is where I really struggled was that it's identity. Everything that I want to speak to is identity, and not visual identity in terms of design, but life by design, in terms of who you are as a person, is shaped by what you see, what you hear, who you hang around, what you consume, the area that you live, the environment that you live. All of these things help to shape who you are and they help to create your belief systems and your spirituality, all of these things, and it has got me really looking into, obviously studying, human behavior. You really start to terrorate away, away these blindfolds that have been in the way of you seeing, I guess, what's been in front of you the whole time. I've also noticed that things that I wasn't noticing before have been hidden by the conversations that I wasn't having with the right people, and that wasn't you know, it just kind of happened that way. You live in certain areas, you meet certain people, but it was a conscious choice of mine to go out and manually change my algorithm so that I was seeing different things by different people. That helped me to align the way I want to think.
Speaker 1:Both sides of the fence, you hear both sides until you get to a point where you're like, yeah, I can see where I sit here and you still do want to hear the other side of the story, because you there are reasons why they think the way that they do as well and whatever, for whatever reason that may be. So, say, if you're talking about gun violence in America and we're talking about the elimination of guns, there is a deep belief system there that ties into their upbringing, right? So when you say you're taking away someone's gun, logically, that makes sense to most people, but when you're talking about people that have grown up with guns, that that's their life, like that's part of their identity. It's deeply intertwined with memories, um, good memories, bad memories, a whole heap of things and choices that they've made and, yeah, who they are. So it it actually is an identity alignment, and well, not necessarily an alignment, but it's a whole thing that they now have to revisit.
Speaker 1:I believe that, like when women have kids, whether I mean, or you have some kind of life-changing event, you go through some kind of identity realignment. So I found that that happened to me, obviously after I had children, but also after everything that's kind of happened at the same time, and I think you'll find that this happened to a lot of people during COVID there was a big readjustment of the way that we work. So you are not going to see everyone that wants to go back to the office five days a week if their job is quite capable to be done remotely. Like that whole thing is not a fad, it's how it is now, and so you've seen these big things change across the board and it's changed the way we do things. So, obviously, if you've now got more time at home so, for instance, when I was working in the studio in the city for my old agency prior to mine, it was like 15 hours a week travel you think about that time back. That's 15 hours, that's two days worth of work. How much time that now gives you back into your life. Like, of course, no one's going to want to go back into the office. What a waste of money, time and effort. Like so yeah, so you see all these changes, all of the stuff happening, and it was yeah, last week it was like okay, what's missing here? Like what am I not doing?
Speaker 1:And it really just came back down to the fact of what I wanted to talk about was the wellness space, and when I talk about wellness, I don't talk, I'm not talking about, like you know. I know green smoothie or yoga class though that can fit in but I'm talking about inequities. I'm talking about wellness in terms of environmental wellness. So you know your space that you're in the conversations that you're having, which is organizational culture, the way people treat people, inclusivity. We're talking about what things that you have at play, the way that you run your business, the culture that you're leading is all embedded in system by design. It's how you create your brand and and what that means by by the external validation, but also internal validation, of what it is that you're doing, and are you leading that by example? It's all good to chuck some values on a piece of paper, but if they're not embedded in everything you do, then that's not living by values, that's just ticking a box and still continuing to carry on like a traditional business.
Speaker 1:But we also talk about women's health. I'm very big on women's health, especially mental health, and but not even just like it's mental health in general, so it's not just women's health. Obviously I'm a woman, so I'm talking about how that affects women, which have notoriously been left out of the conversation, and big conversations around things that haven't happened before, even in neurodiversity, like late stage diagnosis. I'm speaking at the Women's Agenda, women's and Women's Wellbeing Conference in September, which I will be on a panel speaking to women being late stage diagnosed with ADHD and my experience with it. So I've just found that I've naturally fell into this place of things that I can talk to by experience. I'm going to talk to you by knowledge, because I've studied areas of the brain which obviously speak to neurodiversity, but also having years and years of experience of known diagnosis. So I was diagnosed at 11.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's like that and obviously having two neurodivergent children, having to, I guess, advocate for them and make sure that people are understanding the way that they need to speak to them and that's not just school, school's been amazing. It's like also friends or family and you know people around us fighting stigmas and breaking those stereotypes as to what people think it should be versus what it is like, really breaking down. And I am very outspoken. But I am very outspoken in a way that I've studied things and I've got the facts and the reports to back up what I'm saying. So I'm just going to willy-nilly throw some bullshit out. It's going to be backed by, you know, some truth.
Speaker 1:But then I'm also talking about, you know, brands that are really trying to change the game, or ones that have created something that's different, innovative, innovative. I can always do that Like they're in this space and they know that there is something that they've got that is going to be great and people don't believe them yet, and or they need something to really like, create it, create impact. I'm like, so there for that. So that's the type of stuff that I'm really doing at the moment, and it wasn't until I went back and even the women's accountant that I'm rebranding at the moment. We're rebranding her and we're looking at, like, financial stability for women and talking about how to understand finances, which a lot of women haven't been taught, so how to generate wealth and so we go back to the board of what are the conversations that you want to lead, and then we really go back to okay, is this, is it?
Speaker 1:So I've been struggling to align what I've been saying on my personal brand with what it is that I wanted to do with you on and only and we were there. We just needed to go just a slight layer deeper and it was like the planets aligned ding ding, ding, ding, ding, and everything kind of was like oh, there it is, which now makes it easy to target people and now makes it easy to have conversations. It now makes it easy to do the things that I want to do and talk to them in depth and deep nuance, so that people can understand that this is, this isn't just this isn't just something that I want to target, this is actually lived experience. This is something I'm super passionate about and something that will just naturally evolve, and talking to, well, having Ari, my son, be a transplant recipient, but also on the spectrum, he's a double banger. So it's like we're looking at things from multiple layers. It's two or three different levels of understanding the complexities of systems and how to deal with that. So that's where I've decided to take you one and only, and obviously Sam's all for it too. So Sam being the studio manager, also slash. My sister uh, she's also neurodivergent, also suffers from endometriosis, so it's very much in alignment. Also neurodivergent children too.
Speaker 1:So it's this is where we're at it's having these conversations, that this is where we're at it's having these conversations, that well, we want to progress as well. It's not just you know, it's not, it is the way it is. It's like let's actually make change here. So some people may not be as outspoken, and that's fine, but other people will be, and that's what we want to do right now. And so I guess that's what we would say would be the invisible tax of being different in business. So having the ability to challenge the status quo will always have a hidden cost that traditional businesses don't face. But it's a tax that well, it's an investment.
Speaker 1:I would say that that's in market leadership, and I think that that's something that we need to consider is that we're watching all these people. Well, we're watching society actually stem into individualization, which is both good and bad, but it's more like personalization. We're watching communities really thrive again, but the communities are coming from really niche spaces, so women's health are one, for example. We're talking menopause perimenopause is is such a huge space right now because it's been notoriously left out of the conversation, and so I have been really interested in this topic, being 39 not there yet, but close, speaking with my business group, with women that are, you know, 50s, 60s, and what they went through, what they're going through and what they've been experiencing, and it's opened my eyes up to things that I will be dealing with, and that's now made me want to take charge of helping to change something now, so that those that follow us won't have to deal with the same thing, and that's, to me, what everything is about, what I do.
Speaker 1:When I started you Want it Only. On a piece of paper I wrote don't put shit to market. I say this often and I say it truthfully, because I genuinely don't want to contribute to the shit pile of crap that has been going out at the moment that is rinse and repeat based off AIA. Wow, how dyslexic of me. That's a whole thing. It's AI regurgitated rubbish.
Speaker 1:You are going to see the big, deep conversations, truthful conversations, real storytelling and experience conversations come from those that know what they're doing. So I believe AI is good. I think it's great for being able to complete a whole bunch of tasks in a shorter period of time, which is great. However, I do think that people having access to stuff like this when they actually aren't experienced is that they are going to just be like spitting out and diluting the true messages of what people need to see and hear, and it's going to just bleh. I would much rather read someone's post or someone's story that has typos throughout, without punctuation being correct, and have a truth behind what they're saying, versus someone that has gone into AI and completely fabricated their story. Now, that's not saying that you can't use AI to fix the structure like it's complete. That's like going to uni and having them rewrite your or you know mark your assessment Very different, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Ai is great to for my brain as a neurodivergent. It's great to articulate. When I have 50,000 different tabs open, I'm like how, what am I thinking here? And it helps to kind of streamline the thinking. It's. It's very, it's very interesting to see the narratives changing.
Speaker 1:So we are seeing big changes in environmental spaces, in purpose-driven leadership. We are seeing consumers want more out of brands, and we will continue to see that this is not going to be something that is just going to be a fad. It is the future of where brand is going, and so we're needing to really show behind the scenes, really show that relationship, really show what the business is about, what they, what they're doing, what they're intending to do. And I guess the way that you would look at it is it's a values-driven investment that is worth every penny. If you look at it, I guess we speak to it as being like the mission of building brands for those who won't let important conversations stay quiet, and I think that applies to you know, two sides of the fence, there'll be people that want to be really loud about it and there'll be people that kind of want to just make a slight change, and we we're there for both of them. You don't have to approach it the way that we want to approach the way that we do our brand, and if you want to subtly create change, then good. Any change is good change, and that's what we want to do.
Speaker 1:But, like when we're looking at it in terms of, I guess, disruption, it can feel really scary to a lot of people because you don't want to talk about taboo subjects, because, heaven forbid, someone will blast you for that and you will. But that's where the connection happens you repel the ones that you don't want to work with and you bring in the ones that do so. There'll be a lot of businesses that are innovators and they're disrupting established systems, and they'll embrace it and end up creating what we will see as the future. It's that's innovation. And innovation is tricky because it feels like it's wrong, or or you don't have validation because it hasn't been done yet, and that's where that's where it really comes from.
Speaker 1:Everyone wants, wants to watch someone do it first. It's the whole tipping point. They watch the early adopters do it first, see what they stuff up in, and then the mass market will jump on when everyone else is kind of doing doing it as well. That's where you see the trend come in and that dips off. And so the point is and we've seen it with AI everyone's jumping on AI. They want to do AI, this AI, that it's going to die out. Ai is going to become normality. But, like, having that AI feature is just going to become normal and people will be like, oh cool, all right, and everyone's going to figure it out. It's the same thing that happened with reels. It's the same thing that happened with social media. It's the same thing that happened with web. Like it all. It all ends up stabilizing. So putting all your eggs in one basket unless you're going to really hammer hard on it is just another trend jump. It's like having that layer of what it is, that you know what to do well, and I'm being able to understand how all of these tools come into play to help you elevate the strategy, the strategic strategy, the underlying parts of the business and the marketing that the tactical execution, which would be the tools you use, can help to advance. So AI isn't going to become your strategic play, but it will help you to evolve your strategy if that makes sense. Same with you know, say, if you were doing reels. Reels helped you to get more exposure. That's what it is. It's not your strategy, it's just the way that you execute.
Speaker 1:I guess, when we look at what a what that type of change looks like in a business, it might be those that are looking at like hyper niches. There'll be people that'll be like this isn't the way it is, like this is gonna die out, but like it depends. I like to look at it in. I mean, it just sounds like I'm completely contradicting myself here, but it really depends on what it is. So, for instance, if you are in AI and you get really good at it and you could become a specialist in AI, that and it's something that you genuinely want to do go hard at it, you know, go and do it. It's going to evolve and being in front of the change is someone, something that will do you well. But if you're only just partially dipping your toe into profiteer off the current spike, then you're going to find that you're just jumping to the next trend after that.
Speaker 1:The way I look at it is what are people doing? So, obviously, when I saw the rise of AI, I wanted to see the rise of technology, which is, I mean, when I saw the rise of AI, I wanted to see the rise of human behavior and the way that we act and behave to the changes. The very contrast of AI is people, so are what's the response here? What are they going to be? So I hammered down on understanding people simultaneously. Why I hammered down on understanding ai? And they're both two sides of the same coin and it's important to understand how they both work together in order to move forward. And it's the same with anything, but watching the way that the consumer is spending their money at the moment has heavily been well.
Speaker 1:We're watching it happen in terms of of their alliance, in terms of what they believe in, in their belief systems, and I keep saying this, but look at it like you know uh, I guess, a trauma informed fitness studio that's investing in staff training, accessibility, modifications and community education. They're creating like a loyal community in the market for a specific pocket of the market, by the way. So they're not going for the broader, they're going for what I would consider to be an underserved market and when there's enough people in an underserved market, this is also positioning. By the way, this is what we've been really hammering down on for people, you find your pocket. You need to be very clear on what your objective is for the business what you're wanting it to achieve, and then you figure out what the areas are, which areas are the best for you to be in, so that you can then, you know, have a sustainable growth in your business.
Speaker 1:Obviously, there'll be ups and downs. In order for me to have done what we're doing now, I've taken a step back so I can invest time, which is like watching it dip, like a bridge, because you lose an initial, an initial audience the current one that you have that no longer wants to watch what you're doing or isn't interested, or it doesn't apply to them anymore. And then you pick up the new one. So you will see a dip, but it will rise back up. But it's in that dip that most people quit. They're like, oh, this isn't working, and then they'll go back to the way it was, and then they just won't stick to it, and then that's why they find themselves constantly in this cycle, because they're chasing the next trend. And then it dips, and then it spikes and it finishes and goes back down again and dips, and you need to kind of ride it. And so that's where we've been and we've started to see it come back up.
Speaker 1:But the more that we dig in, the deeper it gets, and I think a lot of people just assume that the deeper you go or the more niche you become, then you're eliminating the market. Yes and no. So if we look at it like um well, rihanna and fenty, for instance, she actually just found her pocket in the market because she extended the shade range of her foundations to be accepting of those either side of the standard norm in the shades, so like she had a darker foundation and lighter foundation and it blew up. All it is is being able to identify a need, something that people need, that isn't there at the moment. And if you do that, well, there is enough people in the market that will buy from you and you market effectively. You will capture that audience before someone else gets there. There's plenty of underserved places at the market that will buy from you and you market effectively. You will capture that audience before someone else gets there. There's plenty of underserved places at the moment. That's why, if there wasn't, they wouldn't.
Speaker 1:And every time we evolve, just jump to the next part. Then, every time we evolve as a human being, like as a, I guess, as a civilization, there's new things. There's like look at where we are you know, from 20 years ago complete change in what's happened. Every time there's going to be some kind of innovation and everyone's going to have to adapt to it. Therefore, there's new needs, new wants, new desires all of those things. Also, the market works simultaneously with that. So how people spend, what the economy is doing, what people are buying Like we saw a direct response to buying more toilet paper during COVID, whereas no one's doing that anymore. But there's like these things where people will have a direct response based to emotional purchasing, and that's why emotions are really important to understand and to nail down on. But it is an invisible tax. To be different, because it's a tax on taking a risk on something that hasn't happened yet. It's an innovation and it's really.
Speaker 1:For us, it's more about focusing on that complex, meaningful project over a quick win. We could have easily gone out to market during those last two years and sold something. That would have made a shite ton of money, but I have a soul and I don't. That's not what I've ever wanted to do and it goes against everything that I. That would have made a shite ton of money, but I have a soul and I don't. That's not what I've ever wanted to do, and it goes against everything that I put down on that piece of paper of profit, you know, of purpose over profit, of don't put shit to market. And so we've created our, I guess, unique market position and we're doing things different and that makes us irreplaceable to clients who value that type of depth. So those that want things quick, fast and easy probably won't want to come to us, but those that want something really good, they're wanting change. I mean, that's not saying that we're slow, but like we're moving into this space of we've fixed up our own systems internally so that we can push out our system and our process a lot faster. Now I just had to kind of get through a whole bunch of clients to be able to do that, and that's again. It's another risk when you're in the middle of like research during the process you can actually be hit or miss. So there's been a lot of client management during that time as we've changed our systems internally. But the work is amazing. The work that has come out of this is really really good and now we're being able to position ourselves in a place where I feel really good about it.
Speaker 1:I think that's the thing is. You need to understand what wealth you're driving. For me personally, as a business owner and a founder or an entrepreneur in general, is that you wanna create things that you want to create. I want to create things that are helping to advance society and they're doing things for good and they're not just contributing to shit. I don't want to. Just I left my old job. I refused to work on my old job on a couple of projects because they were just doing this brand that I didn't believe in. I'm like I can to work on my job on one of a couple of projects because they were just doing this brand that I didn't believe in. I'm like I can't work on it because you're selling them shit that they don't need.
Speaker 1:There was something on Gruen I saw the other week that was talking about. You know, it's our job as advertisers to sell. We don't need to know what the product is, we just need to know. We just need to roll it in glitter or whatever I say roll a shit in glitter. But she said something else I can't remember, but it's all along the same lines of, and I was like I disagree. I think we all have a moral compass into the way that we work. I think if you're working for someone else, I mean, you're obviously restricted into what you can and can't do. But when it does come down to it, there is a moral obligation that we do have and I personally believe that um positioning ourselves like this is good. But I also refuse to work on a cigarette tobacco brand.
Speaker 1:Back when I was in my old agency on Sarkomment, they were part of a subsidiary of WPP, so that meant that you know, we had brands overseas that needed things done and while we were quiet they were getting us to do asked us if we could do some things for overseas. At the time, obviously, the UK didn't have any plain packaging or what Australia did for their cigarettes, and I was like, no, it was just against what I believed in. So I didn't do it. And yeah, I didn't have to do it, it was my personal moral obligation. I mean, they could have said something to me, but they didn't. So yeah, it was where I said no, and I think that that's every time you do say no to something, even if it breaks your bank, it it makes you a little bit stronger in the direction.
Speaker 1:I am very clear now in what direction we want to take you one and only in and that will be fighting through with strategic disruption for those brands that are actually wanting to make good change. And I think that, yeah, it's the storytelling that I now have that can coincide with that from lived experience, that will help to really strengthen that message, because we aren't just people that need to, that want to work in this space to create change. We're people that this type of work affect. We, being both Sam and I, we are the people that these laws and these systems affect. We are the people living inside of these worlds that are notoriously left out. We are also navigating these systems that have blocked us out. You know, having to navigate through the ndis actually had a dream uh, what do you call it? Process with that, because my client also I'm her client now uh, the upstream collective, corinne, uh, she helped me to navigate all of that red tape and that was a super awesome thing, and it was wasn't until I started to do a lot of these brands that I was like this is it, this is the stuff that beats my heart. So, yeah, that's I guess that's what I wanted to say is, if you're doing something that you feel is right, then you will just navigate in that direction.
Speaker 1:I think that our choice to focus on those complex, meaningful projects over quick wins will obviously it compounds. So it's not like it just happens straight away, so it feels expensive, but it does create compounding. So it's like that brand equity. Eventually it gets to that point where people know you for that space and people will only refer you because they know that you're the person in that space. And it could be like a tech example of someone doing a privacy first app, for instance, and we hear so many things about data breaches at the moment. But if they're spending big money on expensive infrastructure over data monetization, then they're becoming more of the trusted choice when privacy matters. People are really, you know, into their privacy at the moment. That's a big big thing. So, yeah, it's like, or the same thing with like.
Speaker 1:I guess if you were to look at a financial institution, thinking of my women's accountant, it's a values driven investment firm that turns down harmful opportunities. You know it attracts people that are aligned and into wealth building as opposed to, you know, doing things differently or the same Capitalism. So I guess that's that's for today. It's it's if you're sitting out there and I know that we attract a lot of neurodiverse entrepreneurs. Naturally, a lot of neurodivergent people are entrepreneurs, and it does feel hard, it feels changed, but there's something in there that's driving you to do something different, like I would take a look at that, like see what it is. That's that's inside there.
Speaker 1:We've been working with um Ayla from Daya and she has a tallow skincare company and it wasn't until we dived into her brand that we realized that her differentiation came from such a deeper story. She had created this skincare brand and it came from her creating something that really stemmed from her masking, when she was younger, from acne. So she created a product that helped her to eliminate her acne. But really it was about her masking something that she didn't want to mask. She hated wearing makeup, but she had to because she needed to hide her acne. But once her skin was clean, then she was able to take that mask off and find her real confidence and inner beauty, and I think that's like the deeper message that was at play here. She also just so happened to be experienced in women's health and was a personal trainer, so she knew a lot about that space and we really steered her in the right direction. So I'm really excited to see what she does there. She's doing her visual identity with one of our other clients that referred her to us. That's Jax, and she owns a sensory design company. She does like spaces and she's very good at it, and it's called Studio Ambi. So, yeah, we've been working together on that and, yeah, really interesting to see these new products and services pop up that are actually really solving problems.
Speaker 1:I think that's just what it comes down to is, if you feel like it's right, stay on track and be really dedicated to speaking to what it is that you do well and it will be messy for some people, but if you're in the process of doing really well, we speak to a lot of businesses that are already killing it. The thing that it's either you need time or you need money. And the ones that are doing really well and they're really busy, the thing that holds them back is their time, so they don't actually move forward because they're stuck, because they're too busy. And then the ones that are at the other end have all the time, but they don't have the money at the other end have all the time, but they don't have the money. So it's kind of like that balance.
Speaker 1:You need to find what it is that you need and really hammer down on the objective Just cracked my knuckle, sorry, if you could hear that, I just naturally do it and yeah, so I guess that's it for today is just figuring out that if you are doing something that's different and you feel like you want to do something that's different, then it will feel difficult if you're innovating, and I guess it's just validation. A lot of people need that validation to know that you are on the right track. And sometimes you need, like guidance and someone to look externally, because we do get stuck in our own biases. And that's the most important thing is figuring out what you're investing your time in is the right thing. Thing is figuring out what you're investing your time in is the right thing. So I'm really excited to say that, yeah, we're very much in the focus of doing the wellness space and, coming from a big background in that area, I am. I have never been more clearer. So watch this space.
Speaker 1:And, of course, if you are needing to dive in and do some of this nuanced kind of strategic work, we have plenty of things available to you. We can do one-on-one calls. You can find your own positioning map. You can do an audience analysis, or you can simply download our five-day gap strategy, which will give you our five days of positioning gaps that you can find, or our brand market advantage gap workbook, which is a 67 digital product that you can download and do, which is I've had lots of feedback from that, which is really great, so I just don't promote it so bad me.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you did, uh, or you have any questions, please slip into our dms, like I'm totally fine to have conversations, otherwise, I will chat to you next week. Did you like that episode? I hope so, because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at yourwannanonly underscore au on Instagram.
