Community Over Cash: How to Build a Patagonia-Level Brand That Actually Lasts

I've got a Matcha with me right now, as usual. A lot of people have known me to have that. I became a fan of Matcha years ago after I just, I don't drink coffee. I never liked it. And so I eventually was introduced to Matcha. And I love the whole ritual of it. I think it's, you know, as busy entrepreneurs and as creatives, it's nice to have a ritual where you can kind of go through the process of making the Matcha kind of forces you to pause and, you know, reflect for a second. But also it's an awesome source of energy and it kind of gives you that stable energy. It's not like a big caffeine spike, like a shot of espresso or something. And so, yeah, that smooth, calming energy, it kind of fits in with my lifestyle. And, you know, being someone who works in branding, I thought it'd be a great experiment to actually launch a brand and that's what I did with Maker earlier this year.

Yeah, we won't. We. I've never heard it compared that way, but I can see, I can see what you mean.

Absolutely. I think to your point, it is definitely critical. Some, many big brands, like you said, they start from, from a community kind of organically. And I think nowadays we're seeing a huge decline in trust overall. A brand of government of, you know, different companies. And one of the things do trust more and more are kind of peer recommendations. And you know, to build community for a brand, to build community is, is really a way to build that trust. I think we've seen all kinds of stats lately about how trust is, is continuously eroding. And I think from anyone who's looking to succeed in the long term, at least, you gotta build trust. People can sell a product or, you know, overnight or a quick service or product on demand, but really trust is built through community. And I think the second part that's really important nowadays with the political climate with, you know, all kinds of conflict around the world, community is needed more than ever. And I think that people crave connection and belonging, but community helps to actually build that belonging. So yeah, there's a whole bunch of reasons why, but I think making community a core part of your brand and your work will really help to draw people towards you and not only that, but to help them stick around.

Yep, yep. Yeah, I think those are. First of all, those are awesome brands. What I love about Patagonia is that they really and truly live out their brand values and they're definitely taking an approach of putting the planet first and that shows up in everything that they do. Right. They've, I'm not sure if you heard, but over the last year or two, they made a major commitment that basically Their shareholders are the planet. Right. All of their, their equity will be donated to, to a nonprofit that helps the environment. And I think that the purpose, first piece is really, really important. I believe their tagline is that they say that we're in business to save our home planet. Whereas if you look at arc', Teryx, which a lot of people don't enjoy the name, pronouncing the name of it, I know they're more focused on performance and design. Right. They really want to help people survive those kind of severe conditions. So they're, they take a very different approach when it comes to their branding and their materials even. Right. Arctric's has very slick branding, very, you know, grayscale neutral, whereas Patagonia is very colorful and they use a lot more kind of illustration and things like this. So yeah, they're, they're very different brands, both selling in the same space.

Yeah, thanks for that. I think the first thing to acknowledge obviously that is that it's, you know, it's built up over time and I've had different phases of my, my businesses but I've always continued to, to share consistently. You know, I had an agency that I ran for about and even after it was acquired and even after I had partners, you know, I was still, still the one kind of running it. I think it's, it's really important that I as a strategist, stay a practitioner. I love that Gary Vaynerchuk talks about all that all the time. Where he always wants to, you know, he has always said that he's still a practitioner. As soon as a new social platform comes out, he learns it, he downloads it, he plays around with it. From, from my perspective, I balance it because I think it's, it's an actual priority for me to be engaging and being on the social platforms. Not that I, I, you know, hand post every single thing on every, single, you know, account I'm involved with, but creating content has been a priority for me and especially the organic content. So I balance it in a few different ways. You know, I prioritize my, my personal brand first and I do that by scheduling shoots either once a month or once, or sorry, once or twice a month. And with those, those video shoots I come with a list of topics that either I've been asked about or that I'm going to be speaking about at a talk or a conference and I create basically a bunch of short form content from there. And then I've committed to having a weekly or bi weekly newsletter through my own personal brand that just kind of forces me to get deeper and get thinking about stuff. So I think it's part of my practice, you know, as a strategist to be, to be out there posting and thinking when it comes to my brands. I think the Good Growth company and maker Matcha, they both serve very different audiences. Right. And you can see that, you know, we chatted about community earlier. They're very different communities. So you know, a couple weeks ago I hosted a Meetup in Toronto where I'm from, for nonprofit professionals through Good Growth Company. And this coming weekend I'm, you know, hosting a pop up and a workshop on the matcha side which again, two completely different audiences, but I get to play around with the, you know, B2B and B2C sides of things. And I'm always thinking about content to answer your question. So if I'm going to a meeting or an event, I'm always filming it or I'm having someone come film it and then I'm able to kind of repurpose that later and turn it into something valuable with the kind of, you know, caveat that of course if there's client work, if there's meetings, if there's events, I will easily delay a post or delay a shoot if I have to. But I've been able to build it up over time, putting my reps in, trying to improve. I bet if you watched a video from, you know, five years ago or so, it would definitely not be as strong as the ones from the last year or so.

Yes, yeah, I don't, I don't use threads very often, but occasionally I will, I will share some stuff on there.

Absolutely, yeah. And one thing I'll add is that obviously, you know, a lot of people pull up their phone first and go to Instagram or depending on your generation, you'll, you'll go to Tic TAC or a TikTok or Snapchat as well. But for me, I, I, we often, we often forget about LinkedIn being kind of, especially in the B2B space, one of the most important ones and not so much having the company pages on there, keeping those active, but, but being active as an individual. And I think that actually is my largest platform. I have the most reach there. I get the most, you know, weekly impressions and profile views. And investing in a LinkedIn Premium account kind of helps me to stay committed to that and stay focused on it. But LinkedIn has definitely been one that's been helpful from an overarching personal brand and growth perspective. And then of course, because I want to remain top of mind to individuals. That's where, you know, I'm sharing on, on Instagram. The Matcha brand is a whole different story. It's, it's, it's always about Instagram and TikTok and it's, it's, it's nowhere else. I don't have it listed even on

Yeah, that's a, that's a really great question. I know quite a few founders who would answer this differently. And so I know a couple of people who are, you know, super, super keen on just doing one thing, one service, offering even, not even multiple services for one audience. And that's great if you can, you know, build up a niche and if you don't get bored and you can kind of really own, own your craft and build that up over time. For me, what I like to do is apply my expertise across multiple different industries. I've always been really passionate about some, you know, the social impact space ever since I was a high school student. And I, I thought that over time I would use my skills in branding and design and marketing to be able to support that, that community. So the, you know, so I decided to launch a nonprofit back when I was a student, but now I launched the Good Growth company to help train and upscale those companies. So it exists, it has, it has its own offering. However, I still continue to do marketing, marketing and brand strategy, particularly brand and content strategy. And I do that through my own personal brand, which allows me to kind of pick and choose the opportunities that I think are relevant and interesting at the time. If you're a creative person, you, you want to stay interested, you want to keep yourself, you know, open to a variety of options. Which is why I don't just go work in house, full time, one brand. Although I do respect people that have that, you know, incredible depth, I've learned that over the years. There's, you know, a handful of industries that I've kind of have more experience in and I'm able to identify the nuances within those. And you know, the other side of the spectrum are the people that are completely multi passionate where they don't even identify with one of the things that they're involved in. They, they always need to be having a handful of projects. For me, I always kind of identify as a, as a creative, you know, marketer, brand strategist first and then everything else that I do is not necessarily part of my, my bio, so to speak, or my headline, but it's things that I'm passionate about and interested in. So. So to answer your question, you know, it's different for everyone. But I love keeping, I love keeping my hands in, in different pots because whenever I have ideas, naturally as a strategist I'm like, I have an idea for this, I can apply it here. I have a concept for this, I want to try it here. I have different places I can test things out and also I can collaborate with people in different places as well. And the reason I have my, my newsletter, I'm not sure if you saw, but it's called the Intersection. The reason it's called the Intersection is because it is that intersection of all these different kind of worlds overlapping and colliding. And that's essentially, that's how I manage everything. That's my personal brand is what happens at that intersection.

At the moment I don't because my goal is not to necessarily scale any of my businesses to the point where I need a whole operations team. Mostly because I did that with my agency. And I learned that, at least for now, I want to break from that level of growth, right? Different hierarchies, management, hiring, dealing a lot with, you know, changing talent and moving people around on accounts and always, you know, having to maintain a very specific pipeline. So what I've always had for the last, I don't know, five plus years at least is a virtual assistant. And I usually have at any given point two or three individuals that are working subcontracting through me. So whether they're doing one, a one, one client project at a time or whether they have two or three different projects or things they're involved in, that's kind of the, the extent of how I like to do that because I'm, I'm in this new era since I exited my agency of trying to be as nimble as possible and collaborate and plug in with other people that have their own structures and systems. So there's a, you know, for example, there's an agency I've worked with where you know, they have their own team, they have a project manager, they have what they need to do client wise. And I'm, you know, filling that gap as a brand strategist. You know, the same way I would work with a nonprofit organization where they have a head of marketing and they're in charge of the fundraising, they bring me in working independently to come up with some type of other plan for them and that plugs in. So yeah, so I don't have kind of a right hand person at the moment. I did earlier in my career when I was building my agency. But it's a different era and I'm embracing not having people directly, you know, fully report to me. So I'm not as accountable, I don't have to be as accountable to them, but also I get to choose who I can collaborate with at any given time.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Yeah. So my, my, my weekly or bi weekly newsletter is called the Intersection. You can get to it by going to intersection.daniel does.com and Daniel does Co is my main website. I'm actually in the process of updating it. Not the design, just continuously. Yeah, no, we won't be changing the color, just continuously updating the positioning which I think is so important for anyone who is, you know, an entrepreneur or creative self employed. The market's always changing but also you learn from your customers and your prospects about what they're, the words and the terms that they're using to describe their problems and solutions. So I'm actually just, you know, making a little bit of a tweak to be more focused. But my, you know, everything is there and through my LinkedIn I link to mostly everything. But if you love, you know, content and you want to kind of see what I'm sharing on my personal Instagram, I do share a lot of my personal brand videos, but I link to all the things I'm involved in in my bio. So I would say that's probably the most central place to find me.

Thanks Nicholas, I appreciate it. And I'll be sure to follow along to see what's happening in the wonder brand world.