Episode 58: Your Brand Archetype with Kaye Putnam
In today’s podcast, we welcome the insightful Kaye Putnam, a psychology-driven brand strategist for entrepreneurs, as we look into the world of brand strategy. Kaye emphasizes the importance of a clear brand in fostering client love, respect, and willingness to pay premium prices. Our conversation explores Kaye’s journey into brand strategy, touching on the transformative power of the “clarity code” and the significance of authenticity for entrepreneurs, and we discuss the concept of brand archetypes as a practical yet spiritually transformative tool for building a brand rooted in truth, not trends.
Kaye shares valuable insights on the emotional aspects of brand building, highlighting the role of color, voice, and imagery. The discussion also touches on the “10 Truths Exercise” and the perpetual evolution of brands, encouraging listeners to embark on the journey of self-discovery for impactful and lasting brand success. Kaye’s wisdom offers a profound perspective on designing one’s own job description, creating a life, and shaping reality through the power of brand authenticity. The episode concludes with a warm invitation to connect with Kaye through her website, quiz, and podcast for further exploration of brand gravity and entrepreneurial potential.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Welcoming guest Kaye Putnam, a psychology-driven brand strategist for entrepreneurs
- Discussion on the significance of having a clear brand for entrepreneurs
- Introduction to the “clarity code” and its transformative impact on entrepreneurs
- Kaye’s belief in pursuing audacious dreams and unlocking the genius within every entrepreneur
- The role of a clear brand in fostering client love, respect, and willingness to pay premium prices
- Kaye’s background in marketing and realization of the underlying importance of branding
- Development of the “brand archetypes” methodology to identify top skills and foster intuition
- Exploring the challenge of being authentic as an entrepreneur and the need for intentionality
- Introduction to the “10 Truths Exercise” to define a unique point of view
- The pragmatic and practical nature of brand archetypes with transformative spiritual results
- Understanding the power of emotional connection in brand building
- Applying brand decisions to various aspects such as color, voice, personality, and symbolism
- Overcoming the overwhelming nature of brand decisions through the use of archetypes
- The impact of a cohesive emotional thread in brand communication
- The relationship between brand strategy and human psychology in decision-making
- The importance of storytelling in branding and finding new ways to tell the same story
- Longevity and steadfastness in branding through a bottom-up and inside-out approach
- The enduring nature of human psychology and universal values in brand building
- Encouragement to revisit and reevaluate one’s brand as personal and business growth occurs
- Investing in understanding oneself and the core essence to design a unique job description
- The journey from self-discovery to creating a brand that one is proud of
Find Kaye:
The Brand Gravity Show on YouTube
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Want the full transcription? Read on!
Lynn Howard
Excellent. Hi, I’m Lynn.
Amanda Furgiuele (afconsultingteam21@gmail.com)
And I’m Amanda. Welcome to the Pursuit of Badasserie: The Podcast.
Lynn Howard
Welcome, welcome. Today we have Kaye Putnam, a psychology driven based brand strategist for entrepreneurs. And through working with over hundreds and hundreds of clients from global brands and so on.
A little business owner, she’s developed the clarity code. I love that name, the clarity code. She believes in pursuing audacious dreams and that there is a genius that lives inside of every entrepreneur.
When you have a clear brand, your clients love, respect, and are willing to pay premium prices for your work.
It gives you the clarity and the confidence to scale and impact your impact and income.
Kaye Putnam
So welcome, Kaye. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me.
Lynn Howard
I’m so excited for this conversation. Same, same. We love this topic. So tell us how you got started into brand strategy and, yeah.
Kaye Putnam
So my degrees in marketing. So there’s that quote about when you’re a hammer, everything looks like an ale. I try to solve all of the business problems and start my business based on marketing.
And very quickly, realized that there was something underneath the quote unquote perfect. Strategy, perfect social media campaign, perfect marketing campaign that was actually driving results.
I realized before too long, thankfully, that that was the brand. So I’ve always been obsessed with the magic of business and the psychology behind where people buy the what they buy.
But I’ve been putting a methodology to the intuition for the last decade or so now.
Amanda Furgiuele
Love that. Love that. So when it comes to brand strategy, what do you think are the top things that entrepreneurs need to think about?
Kaye Putnam
Oh my gosh. It’s like this is a question that I’ve been answering for my entire life. It’s answering the question, who am I and how am I going to be that in the world?
Because when you’re just going about your daily life, we might have a quote questions us, people understand certain things or have a certain association with you.
But when you become an entrepreneur, you have to get really intentional about how am I going to show up and like, what’s authentic to me?
Everybody says be yourself. But what does that actually mean? And that wasn’t something that was super easy for me to answer when I got started in business.
I was like ridiculously awkward. I was trying to be all of these things that I wasn’t. And I’ve realized over time that there’s tools that can help us see ourselves more clearly.
And thankfully, there’s also people like me that can’t help reflect what is true to you, back to you. And I discovered this tool called brand archetypes that can help you identify what your top skills are.
So that was kind of like my aha moment. And it’s been this amazing thing that has grown since then that entrepreneurs continue to get a ton of value from because it’s telling them something about themselves.
brand strategy is really understanding who you are. And if you don’t know what that is yet, that’s completely normal.
And there’s ways to I love that.
Lynn Howard
Tell us a little bit more about the brand archetype because all I hear is my woo senses going off and I’ve got more type of work.
Spiritual side, second only imagine.
Kaye Putnam
Yeah, so it is a, let’s say it’s a very pragmatic and practical tool, but it has spiritual results. We’ll say that it’s transformational when you really start to own who you are and show up in that way and show up in a way that other people can understand you as well.
So I was in this rabbit hole of internet links back in, I think 2013, and I discovered this like janky 1980s, well 1990s, probably more likely website that just listed these 12 archetypes on them and archetypes are these unconscious patterns that we see show up across literature and movie and brands and all these different places and the people in our lives.
And at this point, I’ve been in business. And I’ve been trying to quote unquote model what is successful. Like just follow the path that other people have done.
You’ll be successful too. And when I was doing this, I had, I think, a video series for little while.
It’s called your Monday morning kick in the pants. Because I was looking up to this very athletic jock type entrepreneur.
there was this other entrepreneur that I looked up to who had a very luxurious New York City lifestyle. So I renamed my offer to be find your it factor.
And I realized as I was reading through these 12 archetypes, each of these different things that I was trying to be all at once, of course, bonded to these different archetypes.
And I was just trying to like mash it all together instead of just standing in the truth and focus of being one or two of these archetypes.
So archetypes are rid. I don’t want to get like too nerdy here, but architects originally come from the work of Carl Jung psychologist in the 60s, who talks about the collective unconscious.
More. Recently, there’s been a few books by Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson that have expanded on this work.
And when I discovered them, I realized that small businesses were basically in the dark. Brands like Harley-Davidson, Coca-Cola, Nike, etc.
have been using this tool forever and having incredible results from it. most small businesses, at least at the time, weren’t aware of And businesses to use in their businesses.
So I’ll stop there so I don’t keep fumbling.
Lynn Howard
We could talk about this a full 30 minutes. Yeah, first of all, I love archetypes. And I think, Amanda, I think we were close when I started going through that process.
just like the knowing, I love that you said, it’s about like the knowing of self and not trying to be everything.
And it really does help you really center who you are as an individual. I was but also as a brand, because even though I didn’t take go through it for my business, I went through it for personal reasons, it totally transformed every landscape of my business and helped me, although I was pretty self aware, but it definitely gave me a deeper level of understanding.
Amanda Furgiuele
So I love that and I love Carl Jung. So, yeah, I could nerd out all day on that subject.
was, I took, I was an English major in college, so we went all through to archetypes and I feel like I nerd it out hardcore on all those things while I was in college.
So you have come to the right place. I love talking about this stuff.
Kaye Putnam
So, I’m so excited to be be be excited be here. so excited be here. excited be here. be so excited I’m so excited be here.
I’m so be be be I’ve been trying not to be this thing because I thought it was a weakness and now my entire life makes sense.
So it can be that transformative if you want it to be or it can be or it can just be a really powerful branding and business tool.
Lynn Howard
Absolutely.
Amanda Furgiuele
I had to be quiet there because I have some interference.
Lynn Howard
By the way, she’ll cut whatever out. So she’s a great editor.
Amanda Furgiuele
Yeah. Anyway, so I would love to talk a little bit more about how you use this psychology driven brand strategy to push people’s businesses further.
So you’re talking about like living in this genius and getting clarity and confidence to scale. But what does that actually look like when you’re actually implementing this brand strategy?
Kaye Putnam
Mm hmm. You really get down to it. Building a brand is a way forward, so you have to have your end destination in mind.
it’s a series of decisions, and those decisions are all in service of connecting with other humans on a very gut psychological level.
Studies show that that is where basically all of our decision making is happening. So if you’re only speaking to the logical side of the brain, you’re missing out on 95% of the potential as a business.
you’re talking about better service, more results, you know, all of those things that, you know, better product, faster, whatever.
None of those things really matter to humans. We use them just more as a checks and balance just justify the decision that we’ve already made emotionally.
So if we accept that science and that premise, our brand becomes a question of how do we convey sensitive emotion?
And the answer to that are like What are the colors that we’re choosing? What are the, what’s the voice of our brand or like the personality?
How are we actually choosing the words in the way that we speak? What are some of the images or symbolism that we’re going to include into our brand?
all of those decisions can feel really overwhelming and we, I know a lot of entrepreneurs can experience this like shiny object syndrome.
I’m like, oh, I like that brand. I like that one. And I like this one. And I like this one without having a way of filtering that to what is authentic and in alignment with you.
So the archetypes help us do this. when we know what our, I like to use two because it gets us enough breathing room to be a little bit more of ourselves.
But when we know what our top two archetypes are, we can take a look at them and see what typically they correspond with because there’s these patterns.
Our brain works by identifying patterns. So there’s things that remind us of love. There’s things that remind us of change in transformation, things that remind us of achievement and grit and hard work.
So you’re using that. As the decision to apply to every piece of your business, and this is where it gets a little bit on a marketer’s level, it becomes hard for me to explain the process of brand strategy, but I hope I’m doing an okay job here because it’s those decisions, and then we apply it everywhere we show up.
We apply it to the podcast that we’re speaking on. We apply it to the clothes that we’re wearing. We apply it to our websites, to our social media, to the ads that we’re running.
So that we have this cohesive emotional thread that’s running through everything because we know that that’s what humans respond to, and that’s what makes them pull out their wallets.
Amanda Furgiuele
I love this. We talk about this in the second book, in our second book, about the idea that you buy with emotion and then you justify with logic.
And I love that you’re really fleshing out what branding is because so many people think that as long as I use the same font, as long as I use the same color, I’m covering, that’s my brand.
And it’s so much more than that, and it really is an emotional feeling. It’s all of that extra stuff that you don’t even think about that really, truly makes your brand.
Kaye Putnam
Yes, yes. have this whole, like, I call it a brand source book that I create with clients. It’s three, like, really full-length pages of decisions that you can make about your brand.
It goes so much beyond.
Lynn Howard
Like, the design is just a little tip of the iceberg. Yeah, I love that. So for our audience, I will say, if you’re just at the place where you need to create font and color cohesion and cohesiveness, do that.
At least do that. the way that to-driven sign. What is the result? Like, what difference do they see? The versus those who do not have it.
Kaye Putnam
Yes. So there’s two sides of this coin. One of the biggest results that I see here is a little bit harder to quantify, but so many entrepreneurs that I work with and that I talk to get stuck in this cycle of second guessing themselves of being distracted by those shiny objects of basically stifling their own voice because they don’t feel comfortable in their own skin and their own brand to show up.
So they’re not posting. They’re not creating content. They’re not making offers. They’re not doing any of those things that we know build the business.
And it’s not because they don’t know how. They have all of the raw ingredients. They have all the tools.
They just aren’t doing it because they’re not fully embodied and confident about what their brand stands for. So there’s this powerful permission piece that happens first.
And then you can start to imagine what happens next. when you’re showing up confidently, when you are… You just have that.
Like that. And… Exfactor, I know that we all have friends maybe like in the past that you were growing up around.
And there was like that one person that just didn’t really know who they were. So they just kept changing themselves depending on who they were around.
Like as humans, that’s a major red flag. And we shy away from that. That doesn’t feel safe. It doesn’t feel trustworthy.
But when you are consistent, when you are cohesive, you are in alignment, you have that X factor of like, this is where I am.
Take it or leave it. People pay attention. engagement rates go up. Your audience grows. You sell more of your offers.
They come easier to sell with less of a convincing conversation, more of just like, I like you. want to work with you.
What, how does this work? More of an order taking situation. So all of those are symptoms of a brand that’s working and a really good sign that it isn’t working or it’s not quite dialed in yet.
That is that like stuckness or stagnates. See, you’re just sucking guessing and.
Lynn Howard
I love that we talk often about the little red and the little green flags. They’re they’re imaginary but essentially that’s what you’re talking about.
You’re speaking about that because if you are if that brand is on point and everything’s an alignment with the subtleties and you’re speaking in the right language with the subtleties and archetypes and from a psychology base, you’re actually planting little green flags and in the US, in most countries.
Green means go, red means stop. love that because essentially what you’re doing and you referred to red flag earlier but you’re helping plant all those subconscious green flags as well as that comfortability to have somebody in that ease, to have somebody follow up like trust and then eventually purchase.
Kaye Putnam
Yes, exactly.
Amanda Furgiuele
So what do you think when you are starting with a new client with a new entrepreneur, what are the things that you’ve other than just going through your archetype, what are the kinds of things that you look for when you are helping somebody build their brand?
Kaye Putnam
Yeah, so the archetype quiz is a great place to start. Second place I like to go is lot of entrepreneurs haven’t done the work to actually define what their unique point of view is.
And it doesn’t even necessarily have to be super related when you’re doing this exercise for the first time to like what you’re selling.
So it doesn’t just have to be this point of view about copywriting or about design or about coaching, whatever it is that you sell.
But what as a human, what is an entrepreneur? Do you believe to be true about the world? And these are some of the messages that become magnetic to your brand.
And one of the primary purposes of our brand is to differentiate us from similar options to elevate our brand beyond just being a commodity.
Just another copywriter, just another coach. So it’s a really fun exercise, not creatively named the 10 truths exercise. Down a piece of paper, literally start each sentence with I believe and finish it as many times as you can.
You can always go back later and like cherry pick and be like, oh, might be really interesting poster. Like this might be something that I’m comfortable sharing publicly.
Maybe my beliefs about, I don’t know, my relationship or my religion or politics aren’t going to make it into your brand or maybe they do.
But you can have that discerning process after you do that brainstorm to really do that brain dump of, okay, if I need to have an opinion, if I need to have a strong point of view, what is that point of view?
a really great second step.
Lynn Howard
I actually love that take on it. unique point of view, because we often talk about USP, right? So our unique selling point, which is very different, the point of view is more like connected connectedness to you and to you.
Your brand, obviously to your voice. But yeah, I love that. like little, little eyeballs are growing off in my head because I can definitely see how they can strengthen ones.
USP, obviously they’re brand. I’m a big, I actually remember doing some exercises like that. I believe statements and like walking through that.
I do. I love that. I can imagine how eye opening that is for your clients.
Kaye Putnam
so many people People don’t do work like that. Yes. Yes. And it all works together like you said. So you need to have a strong offer.
You need to be selling something that people actually want to buy and solve is a real problem or has a real role to play.
But there’s countless options. if we imagine standing in front of the ice cream fridge in the grocery store, like there’s 17 different vanilla ice creams.
We could choose any of them. They’re all fundamentally the same. So how are, Mhm Americans, How are your clients making that decision?
And we build an emotion, especially through a unique point of view statements and some of those other touch points we mentioned earlier, color font, symbolism, et cetera, to help people decide on that gut level.
– Lynn Howard
Yeah, I love that.
Amanda Furgiuele
I love that.
Lynn Howard
Also, sorry, also, though, I want to state that this is, because you mentioned earlier is the unique point of view also helps your clients believe more in themselves.
And I think that that’s really important because you’re doing the archetype work with them. And it’s a new, they might have that aha, we do, obviously, you know, I’ve done that archetype but we do a lot of behavioral self stuff as well with discs and different things like that.
it just gives people like a complete new understanding of who they are. that unique point of view exercise also helps them root even deeper into their voice, their own belief within the
Kaye Putnam
It’s a deepening process too and we constantly are getting to know our market better and we’re getting to know ourselves better and then our businesses continue to work better.
Amanda Furgiuele
It’s that beautiful snowball. Absolutely. I really feel that when you start out on a business, when you’re first starting as a new entrepreneur, you’re one way, but after two, three, ten years, you can completely flip who you are and being able to reevaluate your brand.
I think that’s one thing a lot of people, and I’m a big guilty of this. I don’t think it’s like a lot of other people.
I’ve been guilty of this where you set your brand. You’re like, okay, this is my brand. this is who I am.
I’m going to just this website’s good. Be revisiting your brand as well. It’s not just building that brand the first time, it’s revisiting it because as your business grows so to you, and you might be changing.
And if you aren’t re-addressing your brand every so often, you might be projecting who you were 10 years ago.
Kaye Putnam
Yes, yes. There’s a there’s a tension there at like a dance that we do because if you think about Nike and how they built this enduring brand equity over time, it’s because they found new ways to tell the same story.
Again and again and again. So as much as we can stay in that lane, the butter and the way that we do that is we don’t make those brand decisions or those design decisions from that surface level.
We do it from the inside out and from the upside down where it’s like, I want to make people feel empowered.
And like this is a little bit magical and transformative. what are the design decisions that I can make that are connected to?
And you’ll find that, so like, yes, we’re going to find new ways to say the same thing again and again and again and you might shift a bit, especially as humans building personal brands that happens.
And you might find that you now have more longevity. I’ve had the same website now for about five years.
So my content has continually been evolving coming out with new ideas and stuff, but you can, you can find a little bit more steadfastness.
When you start from this bottom up approach.
Lynn Howard
Well, absolutely, because it’s coming from a completely different, I keep giving the analogy of like the little black dress, right?
it’s a staple of the core essence and you might put new jewelry on or you might dress it up different with a different shoe or whatever, but it’s kind of, it’s timeless.
It’s a part of you, especially when you find that one that just looks amazing on you. And it’s the same aspect.
It’s not superficial branding, which Can be beautiful and can be incredible, but when it’s really rooted to the core essence of who you are, I know you haven’t really said this yet, but it has like your core values tend to stay your core values.
might like slightly change, but your core archetypes stay your core archetypes. They might you might float in and out or feel stronger on one than the other, same with behavioral style like you have your core.
And so when you can actually develop things from that really strong fundamental foundational route. So exactly what you said and I love that you said it, that Nike finds a way to tell the same story over and over and over again with just a renewed voice.
And that’s exactly what you will do. you are going through the work with K to figure out what that brand voice is.
Kaye Putnam
I mean, I’m just going to exert that little piece there and just put it everywhere because you could not have said that better.
And I was thinking of my little black dress. That fits that description. like to say that we build brands on truth, not trends.
It’s like, let’s set aside the superficial and let’s find something that really matters to us because like you said, that doesn’t change and that core essence doesn’t change.
At least not too often. We do evolve 100%. But we can find a little bit more stability and security in that truth.
Lynn Howard
But if you’re really putting in the work, core essence of who you are and what you represent tends to stay the same.
you actually go back to, we talk a lot about it in the book and Amanda, I’ve spoken about it on a different podcast, but I’ve always known what my purpose is before I understood that it was my core purpose.
Now, I was lucky to understand it as a young, at a very young age. However, when people truly find the core essence of who they are, they are able to show up differently and be
Be stronger and use the term steadfast. Be able to be steadfast in a agile in the turbulence or in the changes and stuff.
that choruses of that individual does not go away. They just repackage it. just had a birthday and I was just talking to a girlfriend.
Usually around my birthday, my clothing wants to change a little bit. But I still have my staple pieces that feel good on me and that still represent who I am.
I think it might need to be altered or whatnot. But it still is very much a part of me.
think that’s what you do. We haven’t spoke about this. This is about investing itself and really being able to take the time, take a step back, invest itself to set it up correctly.
You will kind of like the little black dress. It’s usually not a cheap black dress. It’s one that you’ve got that a little bit in but it lasts decades.
Same thing with this. Will be such a core fundamental for your business that you invest in the beginning and then its maintenance and kind of rechecking.
Kaye Putnam
Yes, yes. I get exhausted by all of the algorithm changes on social media and SEO and all of these different things that are in constant flux.
I like to say thank goodness the human algorithm doesn’t change. Our psychological algorithm doesn’t change. It has been valuing these same things.
We’ve had universal values. We’ve had universal desires for basically as long as we’ve been humanning. So if we can find the relevant context in today’s world to attach to one of those universal desires, that’s never going out of style.
Amanda Furgiuele
I love that. I love that love that. So if you could leave our audience with one more little bit of tidbit of information that needs to know about branding or about
Kaye Putnam
What would do? would I be? You told me this was coming and I still am like trying to think about 17 different directions.
I don’t know if this will be useful or not and I hope it doesn’t sound cliché. But this work is worth it.
It’s not easy to figure out who you are and it’s certainly not easy to put yourself out there and to be visible for other people because people do comment.
They do judge. That’s a… Also reality of the human condition. But what’s on the other side of this was on the other side of building a brand that you’re really proud of and doing work that is making that impact and making that income.
It’s like you get to design your own job description. You get to design the life that you live and you get to create your own reality.
And I believe that to be true 100%. I know that it sounds a little bit cliché or a little bit trite.
But you get to do that if you put this work in. And I hope… Hope that those of you that are listening will keep doing that because it’s really important.
Lynn Howard
I don’t think it sounds cliche. And actually, I think it’s essential because when you do truly figure out who you are, you’re able to stay consistent in that and consistency in how you show up is going to exponentially help you overcome those kind of like hurdles and and stand in those hurdles differently.
Amanda Furgiuele
So I love that. And you’ll never be sad for learning more about yourself. that’s never going to be something where you’re like, Oh, I really wish I didn’t know more about my archetype and more about who I am and how I handle situations and people like you.
Psychologically, we are interested in ourselves. So I think it’s an investment worth making, even if it’s more of a personal side and less from business.
That’s always information that’s good to know regardless. Yeah, I don’t think it’s right at all.
Kaye Putnam
Thank you.
Amanda Furgiuele
So how can people get in touch with you? How can they find you and your senses?
Kaye Putnam
So you can find everything on my website. I’m Kaye Putnam.com. The quiz is right at the top of the site.
It’s free. You can take it. When you do put your email address in, you get a free report and free resources.
can unsubscribe at any time. And that’s a really fantastic place to start. I’m also here on YouTube. So if you like video content, I have my own podcast called The Brand Gravity Show, where I do a weekly video podcast as well.
So yeah, all those will be in the show notes.
Amanda Furgiuele
if you are catching this on YouTube, you pop back over to the procedurebadassery.com. All of that information will be linked in the show notes there with actual links so that it isn’t really worth the same way as YouTube sometimes.
But there are on our website. So definitely check that out because Kaye is amazing.
Lynn Howard
Absolutely.
Kaye Putnam
Thank you so much.
Lynn Howard
Absolutely. Oh, yes, we loved it. We loved having you and definitely please check out Kaye.
You like this podcast or think someone else could find value from it. Make sure that you’re sharing, liking, calming, commenting, all that good stuff.
Spread the word of being badass and on the journey of badassery. So, till next time.
Amanda Furgiuele
Get after it.
