Brand Building – Long Term Business Strategy

Freddy Lansky

About Frederick (Freddy) Backpacker turned

“Digital Nomad”

Co-founder of my business iChess.net/iChess.es that I started 4 years ago, off my laptop while traveling the world.

Been traveling for about 5 years without a homebase (but that may change soon)

About iChess.net / iChess.es “Who We Are”

eCommerce website that hosts the largest repository of chess videos and courses in the world in both English and Spanish with over 1,000 videos/courses offered in English and over 500 in Spanish (soon expanding into Portuguese, French and German)

75% of revenue from sale of digital chess courses/videos. Also make money off youtube adsense (700k views per month), Amazon and eBay sales of physical chess courses as well as wholesale deals of our own product line.

Store also offers books, chess equipment and a few other items.

Have our own product line “Empire Chess” (“Imperio Ajedrez” in Spanish)

WTF is a chess video/course????

About iChess.net / iChess.es

“The Story”

Started “by accident” in 2011 – my business partner was already teaching chess online, I suggested making a blog and YouTube channel to promote himself.

Both YouTube and the blog took off, and audience quickly grew. YouTube channels now have 80k subscribers total.

In late 2012 we moved from tutoring to product sales and revenue exploded. Strategy has been similar since then.

We’ve now produced over 180 of our own DVDs/courses under the Empire Chess label.

How does this all relate to branding?

Our niche is very crowded, especially in English. We differentiated ourselves with less resources through the power of branding.

Competitors known as “boring” and “stale” and although that does convert in our niche (surprise, right?), we became known as the “cool guys” which resonated well with our audience.

We also employ sharper graphics, and general modern “image” (yes this is part of branding, though not all of it)

So what exactly is “Branding”Freddy’s Definition: Your “Brand” is

what people THINK about and FEEL about your company when they hear your name that differentiates you from your competitors.

Your “brand” is to your company what your “personality” is to yourself.

What if people don’t associate my company with anything?Then you don’t have a brand, you have a hustle. This means you

are completely undifferentiated from anybody else out there.

What does this mean for you? It means you’re probably a middleman, and since the barrier to entry in these situations is low, your profits will eventually be driven to zero.

The problem with freelancing, one-off “niche sites” drop shipping, Amazon, Teespring, etc …

Hustles come and go, but the one thing that remains constant is profit dries up quick as more people hop on the “latest thing”

Temporary profits, but then you have to find something new. Building a brand builds equity and passive income that lasts forever.

If you’re new to the game: Don’t waste time on nonsense. Focus on your one core “brand” and “business” and get it going.

Adsense niche sites, cool!

Brand Vs HustleBRAND

Differentiated from competitors, offers unique value proposition.

Original source of value.

Long term vision

Repeat customers who promote you and value your brand.

HUSTLE

Undifferentiated from competitors.

“Middle man”

Only focused on immediate returns

One off customers who only choose you because of price or google ranking.

A car salesman is a hustler, the car dealership owner is an entrepreneur. A person who flips real estate is a hustler, the person who owns apartments and collects cashflow is an entrepreneur. The guy who sells you stocks is a hustler, the guy whose stock he’s selling because he just had an IPO is an entrepreneur. A consultant and the guy who owns the consulting company.

A hustler must continue hustling or his income will suffer. An entrepreneur can pick and choose when to hustle and when to strategize for the future. Both are after the same thing, financial freedom and wealth, but unfortunately only one will actually accomplish that.

Source: http://under30ceo.com/

Workshop Portion20 Minute Break

Part Two- 6 Mistakes we Made to

Hurt Our BrandingAnd how you can avoid it!

Mistake #1. Focusing on Short-term profits vs Long-term Gain• This is the

“Hustler/Entrepreneur” Dilemma.

• Along term you will hurt your brand.

• One advantage we have as a small company vs big corporation is we don’t have to think so much about short term profits. Use that to your advantage!

Mistake #2. Living outside your means

• This will lead to #1 (Sending out to many e-mail blasts, too many sales etc)

• When months are good, put that $$$ away. Why? Because if you have lots of extra money you won’t be forced to make short term profit vs long term brand equity decisions.

We have to do another eBlast to break even this

month!

Mistake #3. Losing the conversation. Losing authenticity.

• People view your brand / business as a “giving brand” or “taking brand”

• Important to keep the balance and not depend too much on outbound sales/direct marketing.

• General idea: keep customers feeling like you care more about educating them then just the money

We have to do another eBlast to break even this

month!

Mistake #4. Focusing on the “20” of your sales sources and not on the “80” (80/20 rule)• Being a brand means

focusing on the “one thing” people know you for.

• Many of the most successful businesses and entrepreneurs just have one product and one sales channel.“Diversifying” or are you “wasting resources”

Mistake #5 – Not having systematic way to test your ideas / Not basing biz dev on data

• When you’re a very small company, “trying things and seeing if they work” can work, but as you grow, very bad idea (as we learned)

• If you want to fail: Don’t interview your customers, don’t make decisions based on data, do come up with crazy “pie in the sky” ideas and do make business decisions based on “emotions”

ChessDailyNews.com – Our Grand Idea

Mistake #6 – Losing Morale when times are tough.• Recently had a very botched

website re-launch and domain/business name change Onlinechesslessons.net iChess.net

• Morale was super low. I didn’t help the situation, getting angry made things worse.

• Its never employees fault, its always yours – My partner