Building a Brand from Scratch (Live + Sharing Everything That Happens)

I was thinking about what would be the most fun thing I could do and the most beneficial for you as well.

If you are a creator or entrepreneur, you are going to love the next few weeks.

Why?

Because I’m gonna test out the exact strategies I've shared with you in my blog posts so far.

AND… I’m putting everything I’ve learned from Shane on how to build a brand from scratch to the ultimate test!

My Hypothesis:
What I’m Aiming to Accomplish

My hypothesis is that I can replicate Shane’s success with his Quit by Healing channel on TikTok.

If you don’t know, Shane built a brand from scratch to 160,000+ followers on TikTok in a couple months last year.

Obviously, there were signs of instant success.

Signs like:

1. Videos getting hundreds and thousands of views
2. Videos getting hundreds of thousands of views
3. Videos going viral and getting millions of views!
4. Tons of comments and engagement, etc.

I am going attempt to replicate this success.

And I am going to share the entire process, and everything that happens, with you.

Are you excited? 🙂

At the very least, you will learn what’s working right now and what’s NOT working right now for building a brand from scratch.

Also, just want to point out, the type of brand I’m going to build is going to be audience-based.

Meaning: I will be creating videos to build an audience as well as a brand.

Does that sound good?

Awesome.

Let’s begin.

Step 1: Pick a Niche / Topic

I am using 2 channels to attempt this.

1. Be a Strong Finisher (business oriented)
2. Be a Better Man (masculinity oriented) 

My reasoning for picking these two is because these are two topics that I am very interested in.

Be a Strong Finisher is a personal brand that I started building this year.

I put out 30-35 videos on TikTok on it already…

…but none of them really took off!

That makes this channel a great candidate for our testing.

It would be like a channel tune-up, if you will.

Or how to save a dying channel lol.

Or, at least, how to turn around a channel that feels like it isn’t going anywhere.

Either way, should be fun!

And the other channel (Be a Better Man) is going to be completely brand new.

I am literally going to create it next week, after Round 1 of testing (more on this later).

It will be interesting to see how to blow up a channel right from the start.

And to figure out if that even is possible!

I really don't see why it wouldn't be...

New channels and accounts are blowing up all the time.

No reason why I can't do it.

(some self motivation right there 😎)

So there we have it, step 1 is complete ☑️

Niche picked.

Topics selected.

Let’s move on to…

Step 2: What Videos Should I Create?

Alright, now we’re in the meat and potatoes of it all.

This is the hard part for everyone.

Because we can be stuck on the content creation treadmill for a really long time before seeing any real success…

Or worse: not see any success at all!

Obviously, we don’t want that.

We want the exact opposite: to build a brand in the shortest and fastest way possible!

That’s why getting this step right is crucial.

Let’s think about this for a second…

Why are we creating our videos?

For ourselves?

No.

To show off to our friends that we're making videos? 

No.

To be a TikTok sensation?

lol no!

We’re creating videos to build a brand, right? 

Yes.

And to build a brand, we need an audience?

Yes.

So then who are we creating the videos for?

Our audience!

That means our videos must appeal to the audience we are trying to build…

And to appeal to this audience, my best guess is we should create videos they want to see.

Now the next question for me is:

How do we know what our audience wants to see?

We have to identify what our audience wants.

(What they really really want -- any Spice Girls fans?...no?... just me I guess 😠)

How do we do that…?

Well if you’ve been following my blogs over the last little while, then you know there are 3 ways of doing it.

1. Figure out what catches your audience’s attention
2. Customer Development Calls, and
3. Ask your audience what they want

Since we are building an audience from literal scratch here…

…we can’t exactly ask them what they want.

So that option is out the window.

We could do customer development calls.

It would be simple.

I would have to find 10 people who fit my audience criteria.

Spend an hour with each of them on a call.

And understand their pain points and what they want.

This is doable.

But seems time-intensive.

Also, I don’t know where to find these people.

I could figure it out… but I don’t want to.

(I'm being lazy, I know 😔)

I’m going to pick option #1 and figure out what’s catching my audience’s attention.

Btw, just because I’m picking this option doesn’t mean it’s right or that it’s definitely going to work.

It’s just the most analytical, data-driven option of them all.

That’s why I’m picking it.

I love data.

I love spreadsheets.

And I love analyzing data in spreadsheets lol.

This option suits my personality the best.

So that’s what I’m going to use.

I will test a bunch of messages using Facebook Ads to see which ones catch our target audience’s attention.

The next natural question becomes:

What Messages do I Test?

This is probably the most fun part.

Because we have complete creative freedom here.

We basically need to come up with our best guess for what we think will resonate with our audience.

When we test these messages, our audience will tell us which messages they resonate with.

I usually pick a few different theme based messages to test.

For example:

1. Theme 1: Problem-oriented
2. Theme 2: Solution-oriented
3. Theme 3: Celebrity-oriented

For problem-oriented messages, think questions like:

1. What problems does my target audience face?
2. What could be their biggest pain points?
3. What problems would they want to get rid of?

I use these questions to guide my brainstorming session.

And I use similar questions for identifying solution-oriented messages.

Here’s an example of messages:

• I don’t know what it means to be a good man. (Problem-oriented)
• 3 Steps to being a good man in today’s world. (Solution-oriented)
• Jordan Peterson’s 3 tips to being a good man in today’s world. (Celebrity-oriented)

You don’t need all 3 themes, you can pick the ones you like.

You could even add your own themes.

The combinations are literally infinite.

The truth is: We don’t know what will resonate with our audience.

We can only make our best guess at this stage…

...and then test to see how good our guess was.

You would be right to say that what I am doing is basically The Spaghetti approach.

Throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks lol.

But I like to think of it as:

The Scientific Method Applied to Brand Building

Everything I've described to you is essentially the Empirical Method.

Aka The Scientific Method.

• Step 1: Create hypothesis
• Step 2: Test hypothesis
• Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 until desired result is achieved.

This is what it means to have an experimentation-based approach.

It also makes it easy to keep the emotions out of the process.

The mindset we're going in with is: I’m going to try a bunch of things and see what works.

The outcomes (or the lack of outcomes) are not a representation of who we are, or our worth, as human beings.

If things work, great.

If they don't work, great.

Just need to find the iteration that does work.

We take the lessons forward and keep going.

And we have to be able to give ourselves the freedom to deem the experiment a failure as well.

Just like any science experiment.

We don't know if it's going to work... we just know that we're going to try it.

Next Steps

I am going to brainstorm a bunch of ideas for what messages to test…

…and then I am going to test them against an audience of Males in their 20s and 30s.

That’s my target audience.

My guess is this is a good audience for business-oriented and masculinity-oriented content.

Next week, I will report to you the results of my message testing.

The ideal scenario would be that we identify a message that catches attention like wildfire.

If not, then we either:

1. Pick the next best message (the one that resonates the most), or
2. We run another round of message testing to see what resonates with our audience.

These are really the only 2 options that I see.

I look forward to sharing the results of this experiment with you next week.

Cheers

-Abhi

PS. What questions do you have about building a brand from scratch? 

I’m going to be spending the foreseeable future doing this, so I might as well be as helpful as possible to you.

Let me know down below 🙂