Transcript

Sell More w/ Authentic Branding - Howard Lim

From The Proven Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 41 min · 8,558 words · 104 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Sell More w/ Authentic Branding - Howard Lim", an episode of The Proven Podcast published August 13, 2025 (41 min, about 8,558 words). It mentions 53 people, works and ideas, including Branding, Brand mark, Broadway, LA Marathon, DreamWorks.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Branding, Broadway, DreamWorks, LA Marathon
  2. – 10:00: Branding, Brand equity
  3. – 15:00: Branding, Brand architecture, Brand equity, Brand icon
  4. – 20:00: Branding, Mood board
  5. – 25:00: Branding, Mr. President
  6. – 30:00: Brand mark, Branding, UX Designer
  7. – 35:00: Brand mark, Branding, Moby Dick
  8. – 40:00: Authentic Branding, Branding, Lululemon, Main Hotel

Notable quotes from "Sell More w/ Authentic Branding - Howard Lim"

  • Today we're with Howard and we're talking about branding and so many other different things. Thank you so much for being on the show.
    about Branding · at
  • Was doing. So I start working representing like Apple, Xerox and DreamWorks and started to show them what was possible. And lo and behold, by working with big brands such as…
    about DreamWorks · at
  • I think one of the things that people never talk about is brand equity. The idea and I'm stealing this. This is completely your example where you sit there and say, Hey, I'm going to take a warehouse that's full of Nike shoes and.
    about Brand equity · at
  • Different language in itself where you start to understand it like what's the brand architecture of your business who's going to be the ambassador to your brand there's like…
    about Brand architecture · at
  • Familiar with your brand with the face of the brand. So I call it the brand icon. The brand icon is a name in the company. It's the mark like the Nike swish. It's the font that…
    about Brand icon · at
  • Like commercials. You got the Mayhem guy for All State. You got Flo for Progressive. You got the Geico lizard for Geico. Those are all personality the brands. Now why do people…
    about Progressive · at
  • Who would they vote for? Here's a person with a Louis Vuitton bag. Who's a person with a Whole Foods bag? You know who they're voting for. So, I've always used these examples, but I've never understood it as a personality. That's.
    about Louis Vuitton · at
  • Logo and there's a bit which we don't have a disc we could talk about difference between a logo and a brand mark but let's say their logo they turn in their website they're turning brochure they do have a product their packaging even.
    about Brand mark · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Naomi Lynn Lim — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Today's guest, Howard Lim, proves it's actually about billiondollar positioning. With 37 years of experience behind…
  • Mr. President — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Always work with the spearhead, the founder, the CEO, and or it could be the president or a combination, right?
  • UX Designer — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Don't have these level of experiences, you're going to run into it. I kind of feel like you're like a UX designer in a way in the sense of let me explain. There's so many times…

Books & papers

  • Moby Dick — Book · 1 mention · first at
    To keep that story. like you know how he came up with the book cuz you know Moby Dick D we keep that part of the history behind it but the point being is that now it actually…
  • Authentic Branding — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Book. It took me five years. I think it's been about 15 years and it's called authentic branding.
  • Strong Brands — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

  • DreamWorks — Company · 2 mentions · first at
  • Proven Podcast — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Today's guest, Howard Lim, proves it's actually about billiondollar positioning. With 37 years.
  • Volkswagen — Company · 1 mention · first at
    And that's like where the model Audi TT came from, Volkswagen, some of the greatest movies you ever seen. So, I really wanted to go to that school. only had the first Macintosh lab in the world and I figure out how to get things out.
  • Progressive — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Louis Vuitton — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Whole Food — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Who would they vote for? Here's a person with a Louis Vuitton bag. Who's a person with a Whole Foods bag? You know who they're voting for. So, I've always used these examples…
  • Main Hotel — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Trademarkable, which a hotel in Las Vegas tried to create the hotel called Main Hotel. They battle god knows how much money they spent trying to figure out if they could trademark that name.
  • Motel 6 — Company · 1 mention · first at
    They could not because it's a common word. Then you get into, descriptive describing like Motel 6 when it used to be $6, right?
  • Lululemon — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Like Lululemon for example, right? Or as much as we don't like I didn't like the word at the beginning, Google, right? But the point but the point being is that as you move up the chart. So,.
  • Allstate — Company · 1 mention
  • ArtCenter College of Design — Company · 1 mention
  • Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo — Company · 1 mention
  • Exxon — Company · 1 mention
  • Geico — Company · 1 mention
  • HOW Creative — Company · 1 mention
  • The Lion King (Broadway) — Company · 1 mention
  • WSS — Company · 1 mention
  • Xerox — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • LA Marathon — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    Of experience behind campaigns like Disney's Lion King on Broadway and the LA Marathon rebrand, Howard has cracked the code on what separates million-dollar brands from billion-dollar empires. The show starts now.
  • USSB access card — Product · 1 mention · first at
    To their investors and now it's I think it's made over $9 billion. the USSB access card which became the standard for all campuses now. I think if I'm not mistaken, it's about…
  • Audi TT — Product · 1 mention · first at
    And that's like where the model Audi TT came from, Volkswagen, some of the greatest movies you ever seen. So, I really wanted to go to that school. only had the first Macintosh lab in the world.
  • Flo (Progressive character) — Product · 1 mention
  • Geico Gecko — Product · 1 mention
  • Mayhem (Allstate character) — Product · 1 mention
  • Starbucks logo (mermaid/siren) — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • Broadway — Place · 2 mentions · first at
    Billiondollar positioning. With 37 years of experience behind campaigns like Disney's Lion King on Broadway and the LA Marathon rebrand, Howard has cracked the code on what…
  • Pasadena — Place · 1 mention · first at
    On. And then after I finished my degree there, I went to art center school in Pasadena.
  • Beaverton — Place · 1 mention
  • Los Angeles — Place · 1 mention
  • San Luis Obispo — Place · 1 mention
  • Seattle — Place · 1 mention
  • Vancouver — Place · 1 mention

Sponsors

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Today's guest, Howard Lim, proves it's actually about billiondollar positioning. With 37 years of experience behind campaigns like Disney's Lion King on Broadway and the LA Marathon rebrand, Howard has cracked the code on what separates million-dollar brands from billion-dollar empires. The show starts now.

All right, welcome back to the show. Today we're with Howard and we're talking about branding and so many other different things. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Absolutely. Pleasure being here. So, tell the audience a little bit more about you. I know you've got some amazing stuff. We were talking about this off camera about all the campaigns that you've done and all the branding you've done. Tell the audience a little bit more about you and how you're an expert.

Sure. I've been doing what I've been doing, but it's evolved quite a bit over the last 37 years. And pretty much everybody's been affected by one of the things I branded or positioned or built

over the last years. Um, like for example, I helped position Lion King, you know, the Broadway show for Disney to their investors and now it's I think it's made uh over $9 billion. Um, the USSB access card which became the standard for all campuses now. I think if I'm not mistaken, it's about $20 billion annually across all campuses around the globe. And then the rebranding LA marathon which we had to sell out participation now they're using that format for all all LA Marathons and that drives a lot of revenue as well.

I'm very much about when it comes to branding ROI. It's all about ROI. So how did you get into this? How did you discover that you had this gift and that you know branding really was your thing? Um really quite honestly sound kind of weird but when I was 5 years old the first time I ever finger painted um filling the paint and back then it was like um powder and mixing it with water. I just remember putting my fingers on the paper and I felt it was so magical that I was able to create wherever I chose to whatever my imagination allowed me to do. And when I was in grade school through junior high through high school, um the students noticed or excuse me, the teachers noticed that I was really into design and art. So I'd be always taken to the side and given special projects. And I had a chance to go to I I I think two of the best schools in the world, Calpali and Townless Abyispo.

when I majored in applied art design before design became even a major and studied um packaging, photography, design, illustration, and the list went on. And then after I finished my degree there, I went to art center school in Pasadena.

And that's like where the model um Audi TT came from, Volkswagen, some of the greatest movies you ever seen. So, I really wanted to go to that school. only had the first Macintosh lab in the world and I figure out how to get things out of the computer and that's where it really um hit me hard. I was like well let me just do this for other companies showing them what's possible to get really creative and um fortunately Fortune 500 companies understood what I was doing. So I start working representing like Apple, Xerox and um DreamWorks and started to show them what was possible. And lo and behold, by working with big brands such as those Fortune 100 companies, I started to learn what it really took to build a brand because brand is not taught in school. Um, and so it really hit me that it was like, wow, okay, what is the makeup of branding? The essence of branding quite honestly if you really

look at it is one design which has to do with engaging and designing things that are aesthetically pleasing to engage the consumer hit their emotions

and then advertising which is all about positioning. And so when I was growing up it's like okay you had my brother was in advertising and he says you have to choose between design and advertising. I said why can't I do both?

And that's kind of evolved to the branding as we know today. Now there's it's built with more layers, but that's the essence.

What are So you you talked a lot about how there's a difference in branding and that you've learned it and you it started with fingerprinting and it all and ended up with DreamWorks and all that which is just wild that you go from that. What are some of the major mistakes that people do when they do branding? I mean other than having to rename their podcast in the middle of the season.

So a lot of times quite honestly there so there's two what I found there's two ways to build a brand. Yeah. Yeah,

from the hip or by design, right? What's happening is that most people are doing it from the hip without understanding the different um we could say the different principles behind branding. Um and how could they know it because it has to do with a lot of schooling like I mentioned design and advertising and so forth and so on that has to do with layerings of understanding and knowledge. So most people and the other thing too is that they're thinking that they confuse branding the same with marketing

and they're totally two different animals. Walk me through that. How do you how do you differentiate marketing versus branding? Because I think for most people who have have done this who have scaled we get it but some people like wait what? There's a difference between branding and marketing. I just thought branding was underneath marketing and it's it's not. How do you describe the difference between the two? So branding is about the long-term position of a company to build its equity to build its position in the market and to be understood based on like say some of the core principles like well what's your philosophy that's part of branding what are the values of the company what is it position who's its target market it's a little bit about marketing definitely but it's more about how do you want to get known in the mind of the consumer because a big part of branding It's not what you're saying. It's what everyone

else is saying about you. The question is how do you get everyone to say who you are? The first thing establish who you are and what you do. The second part to this equation now now is using marketing as a like say like a megaphone to broadcast who you are through the different channels whether online and offline.

I I think one of the things that people never talk about is brand equity. The idea and and I'm stealing this. This is completely your example where you sit there and say, "Hey, I'm going to take a warehouse that's full of Nike shoes and I'm going to give you all the Nike shoes. They're yours." But you don't get to have the name. How valuable are those shoes? And I think that's the difference between brand equity. And people just don't understand that in any way, shape, or form. They're so focused on how do I just eat? How do I pay the bills? How do I pay my employees versus how do I build something that could become a dream works? How do I build something that could be this multi-million or billion dollar thing that you've been involved in? So, one of the things you were also talking about is there's different people inside branding. There's different people that you hire and there's different environments and most

people just I don't think understand that. I think like I'm just going to hire a guy for five minutes and my brand's done and I'm good to go and I never have to reevaluate it again. It's completely wrong. Walk me through that as we go into those things.

Yeah. So, what's happening too is like a lot of people that use branding don't do branding. It's so funny because popular the popularity of branding really happened about 12 years ago. I've been doing it way back like over 30 plus years. The point being is this is that it became more popular through like Tang magazines, for magazines, money magazine. Everyone wants to talk about branding right?

But then the next day everyone says they're doing branding and so there's a lot of confusion out there. So what happens is that a lot of people are not doing in fact quite honestly out of all the hundreds of people I've met over the years that say they do branding

two people actually it's a very complex world it's really complex world so going back to your question there's differentiations between different experts of branding basically there's three major camps

so there's a camp as far as strategist the strategists are looking at the long-term play and I say that what do I look at is I design from your future and bring it into the now present. So it's really thinking way down the road. It's like here's my business model. It's like someone comes to us and goes here's our business model. Okay, how can we make it so we can maximize its value? And quite honestly, what is the cycle of the life of that product, service or information?

There's a lot of deep thinking that goes into it. It's like well you have to answer like well what's your overall philosophy be starting off with not about even making money but starting off with what is going to make you distinct and different from everybody else and what would yield adaptability and by the way what markets do you want to actually be able to be delivered in and what industry so there's a there's a lot of like

different like it's kind of like this you know you want to build a city you start to start off with the blueprint right? You just don't start building and piece meloning things together. Otherwise, you'll have a pretty dysfunctional city.

I think you talked about before, you know, people it's some people do branding right off the hip versus planning out and being strategic about it.

Exactly. And and it sounds like the difference between the people who have spent the time to scale and build, which are totally different things. Um when they're going to do this, the difference between becoming a mill multi-million dollar business versus a billion dollar business all comes down to branding. and if they don't put put the time in now, if they don't spend the x amount of days and ask specific questions and and I guess, you know, I you talk about there's there's multiple versions of this, you talked about the strategist, but remind me before we get too far away, I want to tell the audience like the top five questions or 10 questions they should be asking. So, at the end of that, after we go through the the different ones, let's definitely go into that and say, "Hey, these are the things that you should be asking because most people don't understand." And if you're not watching the video of this, Howard

did a really good job where he talks about in all these people that he's met this entire time, he only met two people that were actually branders. And I don't think most people ever come across people who are actually brand because if you're doing this for 37 years and you've come across two, the chances of people like me running across people like you are pretty darn rare. So if we've got the branding strategist, which we understand that, what is the next person? What is the next, you know, kind of step in this? So the next part after the strategy to figure out who you are, what makes you unique, what makes you different from everybody else. Then the next part is execution which I called implementation. So it's now it's now what I call you have your DNA. It's now or you could say even your ingredients to let's say a beautiful cake or meal.

It's now making that meal. It's now making that cake with those ingredients. And that's where it takes like for example to be a strategist. it in my book it takes about 10 years to master becoming a brand strategist. it there's so many there's so it's like a whole different language in itself where you start to understand it like what's the brand architecture of your business who's going to be the ambassador to your brand there's like there's so many components to that right then there's the execution which is now let's build it okay so you got the blueprint let's stick with the analogy of a of a of a city you now have the blueprint it's like well let's start figuring out the roadways after we figure out the roadways let's figure out the residential areas let's figure out the commercial areas Let's figure out how everything is to work around the water, electricity right?

So now it's building it. Okay. So the building part of it there's in my book there's like five major components to it. So branding memory is about not what you're saying it's what everyone else is saying about you. The question becomes how you're going to influence them and getting back to that brand equity. What's in the mouth help them become familiar with your brand with the face of the brand. So I call it the brand icon. The brand icon is a name in the company. It's the mark like the Nike swish. It's the font that you use like um Apple's very clear what font. It's the color that you use. For example, Pepsi owns red and excuse me, Coca-Cola owns red. Pepsi owns blue. So, these are the things that really um and the font that you use. So, the tagline as well.

These five elements are what start to build the face to brand. Now, is that branding the logo for for example? No, that is that's 5% to a brand identity. That's 5% to a brand identity. Okay. Now you're talking about okay that's the face to the company. Think of it like a brand like a person. Now it's the personality. Okay. If when you when you look at big brands, think about this like commercials. You got the Mayhem guy for All State. You got Flo for Progressive. You got the Geico lizard for Geico. Those are all personality the brands. Now why do people why do big brands do that is because they want to make it personalized and they want to be relatable to their target market

right that's part of the designing in the strategy to figure out what kind of personality should we create for a brand and then what are the associations with that personality so when you write the copy for a website or let's say a commercial now you're going to have some consistency

between how you're actually projecting that brand the storytelling the tone voice so What happens when people do it on their own and don't understand it? It's called the civil effect. I call it the civil effect where they have all these different personalities out there,

right? of their brand. Guess what? No one knows who you are. You're actually diluting your brand before you even started.

Yeah. I never sat down even with everything that I've done, never sat, okay, what's the personality of our orc? What is it? What is the personality at? And how are we coming across this? And just while you were talking, I was going through a couple companies that I've worked with and I was like, oops. So, you know, to the idea that I'm like, we never had this guy and we did great. We had we exited. We had great multipliers. We've never sat down and looked at our sales copy. We never looked at our website. We've never looked at our post.

We never looked at anything. And okay, what is our personality that we're trying to come across? It was more about can we get looks and views and can we get virality? Can we get, you know, is it going to close? What is it going to do for the ROI? What is our upcoming sale? versus um and it's interesting because when when it comes to cuz you gave the insurance ones, there are specific ones I will not buy from because of the personality they chose. I'm like that does not resonate with me. I'm not going to do that. And it was one of those things that's completely subconscious that I didn't understand in any way, shape, or form. So, when someone's trying to design this personality, I'm going to completely go here cuz this is fun. How do you find that balance? How do you find a situation where you might have gone too far down the road with one? Like for, you know, simple example, there's a very

specific personality for political parties right now. And that it just it is what it is. It's a personality. We get it. I'm not going to bash one side or the other. I'm going to leave it alone. This is not a political show. But, you know, we I talk about this all the time that people don't buy products and stories. They buy I'm sorry, products or services that make story identities and ways out of pain. I'm going to have to add to that. They buy personalities. Because if I told you and I and I I asked you, hey, here's a guy who's got a 4x4 truck. Who do you vote for? Here's a person who drives a Fiat.

Who would they vote for? Here's a person with a Louis Vuitton bag. Who's a person with a Whole Foods bag? You know who they're voting for. So, I've always used these examples, but I've never understood it as a personality. That's huge for me when you're dividing designing that personality. How do you design it in a way that you're not going to isolate?

Right. And it's a huge chunk of the audience. Right. Right. Right? So, it's a lot of figuring out the persona of your ideal customer.

You can't be all things to all people, right? Because that becomes a waste of marketing as well.

Um seen that over and over and over and over and over again. So, really, it's really what's called and this is goes back to when I were doing a lot of work in um ad agencies back in the 80s and 90s, which is still is now coming out. It's kind of like that the trade secret of how good ads become very um powerful ads. It's called mood boards.

So you create the mood board to figure out your ideal customer and you're figuring out well what would it wear? What would it shop? What you know who is this character? Is it female? Is it male? Is it actually neutral? Okay. What's its age? And so you're really building in quote unquote in its dialogue is how its emotions will be and what its lifestyle is.

Okay. Is it urban? Is it suburban? Is it a farmer? No. Absolutely. And and and and it works. It's like, so how you don't how you make sure you're not alienating is you make sure then you're figuring out that you actually have a brand that actually could maybe float between I just make it up between 25 and 50. Okay? Or let's say want to get down to teenager but also appeal to the elder. Okay. So this is where you actually think very creatively what kind of different campaigns could be be created like what's the core and then from that core what what could be offshoots like like like what I always get with CL clients is I said okay what's maybe our core message and we it takes about two hours to get down to the core message right

the point being is when that core message then you have different offshoots to appeal to those different marketplace based on what channel they're at like are they on YouTube are they reading newspaper. Okay. So, because we got four different now we got the four biggest buying powers. The fourth one starting to pick up the Z generation. But the point being is that you got to really understand the psychology of your buyers to figure out what will be the right persona for the personality to be relatable and the reason why we buy from emotions

100%. It sounds like you're building not only you trying to identify your target market, but it's about who does the target market want to have lunch with. Who would the target market invite to their house?

That's who you're building because it's basing it completely off emotions. And it's something that I've never heard of before. Again, you've only met two of these in the world. I've never heard anyone describe. I've always heard, you know, build rapport, get emotions, you know, avoid, you know, identify their pain, you know, find their watering hole. All of those things I've heard a million times. I've never heard anyone say it's about personality. What is your personality of your brand? Absolutely gamechanging. So, going back. Okay. So, we got strategist. We've got the implementator, we've got, you know, we got the blueprint of the city, we have, okay, now who's going to build the data?

What's our next step? What do we, how do we go from there after that? Okay, so when I always go like when we were rebuilding WSS, for example, in 2010 in a recession, but company that was not doing well at all,

uh, what we had to do is do a relaunch. And so we came up with a strategy. I worked with literally seven or VPs to actually come up with solutions with all of them. But the biggest thing was to come from the standpoint they were all on the same page like everybody because they had their in-house granny marketing advertising. I also work with the CFO and COO CEO D but everybody was moving in their own different directions and I call that the saddle effect. So the first thing was getting everybody where we're on the same scene sheet. And that's why that what we call a master blueprint is so imperative to make sure everyone's clear where we're heading and how we're all going to move there because it's everybody's business when it comes to building the brand. Okay. So I know this is going to come as a surprise, but you're telling me that when you go to scale a business that people don't talk to each other and

inside the organization they're actually not each other's friends. No. So all right. So yeah. surprise. I tell people all the time, the biggest problem in the organization is not the fact you're trying to get customers. It's an internal. Your culture is broken.

And when you're doing this, they're just completely the CFO hates the CIO and the marketing person.

Exactly. They hate each other. It's the biggest problem. You got to unify your culture.

When you run into this, you've done this at pretty high level. You know, you've done this for billion-dollar companies. I'm completely taking us off course here, but what are some of the ways that you unify? What are some of the ways when you come in and you're like, "Hey guys, I get it. marketing thinks branding is garbage. Branding hates it. It hates fulfillment. How have you found a way when you come in and you help out these huge organizations, which is what you do. How do you say, "Okay guys, we all need to play nice to each other because we all like to eat in two months. How do you do that? What are some of the tips and trades that you do?"

So, that's a great question. So, I I always start with the philosophy and I always work with the the the spearhead, the founder, the CEO, and or it could be the president or a combination, right? But whoever is in charge, okay,

I get to understand who they are. And what's funny is that employees like with with companies that have been around for decades, even like generations, the the you could say the management positions finally get to understand who he or she is and how they think.

So always start with the very top to get an understanding what's in their head and questions never been asked before. So then we could ask start to figure out well what are we looking at first of all as a business and where we're heading. So I always start with the philosophy and I have these very deep questions I ask this the quote unquote the leader you could say and once those questions are answered and I form the statement and that for that statement should not be more than two sentences long any longer than that becomes not memorable for anybody.

Okay not lofty paragraphs right? So what are the questions that you ask the founder? What are the one that you walk in? What are like the top two or three that you're like, "Hey, I need to figure out what you're the spearhead. How do we find alignment here?" What do you normally

Sure. So one of the questions could be like if you're facing the you're facing the most horrific challenges with your business, what values are so inherent your company would cease to exist?

Gotcha. Yeah, I I can tell you most sea levels because this is who that's my world. I I interact with the sea guys. I would say majority of them would have no clue how to answer that question immediately right up the hip. They would have to sit down and form that together because they just they've never thought about it. You know, one of the things that I love talking to you about, Howard, is the fact that you're asking questions and you're bringing it from point of view because you've been doing this for 37 years that even as someone who I've done scaling and I've done exits, never asked these questions.

never even thought of asking these questions. So, it's absolutely right. Okay, so that's one. You got another one for me because I'm just stealing information. This is great.

Yeah. So, now I want to be like um what what legacy do you want to leave behind?

Legacy is huge. Yeah. What legacy be want to leave behind and why? You know, why is a big part on that one?

Why? And so I, you know, you're right. And a lot of times the CEO um um they've been asked this question. So I of course I help coach them through it. What happens is though is that they start to see a bigger picture than they ever thought was possible. The reason why I do this by the way is it's kind of like reverse working and and talking to over 100,000 business owners cuz I speak all over the world. The point being is this is I looked at the common denomination and looking at patterns and I realized that most companies only reach 25% of their potential. So I wanted to create a model so they could reach their full potential 90 plus. And so with these deeper questions it allowed us to tap into was the opportunity of really creating something with a hugger bigger ROI but also deeper penetration in the marketplace and actually actually having it where we could do more good for all stakeholders. So there's a reason why I

start figuring out what is the questions that are not being asked that could actually create a company where it's a hell of a lot more sustainable, a hell of a lot more scalable and actually a place that really people want to work with or work for. So that's why I went with this quote unquote strategy of going with deeper questions is so the client would actually end up with something with a deeper potential of a bigger business, okay, if they chose that for themselves or to exit faster for that matter too. So it sounds like, you know, doing these things, you mentioned it earlier, that some of the stuff you did in the 80s and 90s, which no one was alive back then. No, it was so far ago. Um that some of the stuff you did back then is still reaping fruit now. Something 30, 40 years later, these companies are like, "Hey, we're still implementing it." And this is the value of of branding, not marketing about

building this and and sitting down and answering these deep questions. One of the things you told me about that you do is you work with, you know, yes, you speak all over the world and you've spoken to all these people, but you work with individuals and you you really do a brand analysis for them. What does that sound like? Because most people haven't never done that. They'll just say, "I need a brand. Okay, give me a logo," which you already mentioned like 2% to 5% of who you are,

right? Most people have never sat down with someone who is a brander. So, if they're walking in and they're like, "Hey, I'm going to work with Howard on how to do this because I want to say a brander, but I don't know any other brander." So Howard, uh, it's a one environment. What are they going to be doing? What is that experience like for them?

So no matter, and you're right, I work all the way down to solarpreneurs. Like literally, it it's not for me the size of companies. Um, it's more about the difference that they're making. And so my job for me is it is really is so honestly, so I look at this place at this globe that we are on. And I look at from the standpoint, how can you actually make it better?

Yeah. And so it's made up of all these different personalities and different individuals. So what I look at is like when I work with someone, I always look at um are are they operating out of integrity? Do they want to make a difference? Are they coachable? And do they have want to have fun on the way?

Those are my I wish people would answer the third one. Are they coachable? Good god. You know, I always talk about it's not about the I don't care about the size of you. The question is, can I scale you? I've I've said this for years and years and years. The coachable.

Yeah. Holy Moses. I I tell customers as well. It's like, okay, do they want your product? Can they afford your product? Will they buy your product? And then the last one being the most important. Do you want to work with them? And people always forget the last one. So even when you're trying to coach people and scale them, are they coachable? And that's a hard ball game. So, when someone comes in, let's say they they created a podcast name and it sucked and they have to change it on the fly. What are they going to be expecting to walk into? What are some of the questions? What is that environment look like? What should they prepare before they show up to have this conversation with you?

So, what I always start off with, no matter who they are, what size, what industry or B2B, B TOC, or B2G, which is business to government, I always start off with an assessment.

An assessment. And I do it online. And that allows me to work here and work with anybody. Um and so what I do is I ask them to turn in like their their logo and there's a bit which we don't have a disc we could talk about difference between a logo and a brand mark but let's say their logo they turn in their website they're turning brochure they do have a product their product their packaging uh even storefronts because I did a lot of designing storefronts their billboards or radio spots TV spots their social media and what I do is I will look and critique it in a way to take it from good to great and it's It's usually an hour long and I work really fast and the whole thing's recorded and I'm marking things up and going, "Okay, where's your value proposition?" Okay, like their website, for example, the website, um, I have this process I take companies through is like the way I look at website is that the homepage should

really be like a trailer to a movie. Okay, most websites I see is that they're throwing everything in and plus the kitchen sink. So, everything is shouting at you, right? And the reason for that is because a lot of times the these people that are designing websites are not designers. They're desktop publishers.

Yes. Desktop publisher is someone that has no experience in design that picks up like a computer and then call himself a graphic designer without any four years, eight years of schooling. And so what happens is that there's a whole pattern to reading a website, anything for that matter. Dominant, subdominant, subordinate. Dominant, subdominant, subordinate. The headline should be the first thing that people engage in, like a really strong headline that's engaging. And then sub subordinate would be like the body copy to back that up, right?

And subdominant would be a lot of times would be the sub headline. Just like a great newspaper, we're reading a headline, it catches you and you read it. It's this formula. And you're right, these principles will never go away. It's about how we digest information.

Right. Okay. And I think people don't understand that that these ideas, you're talking about human behavior. Sure, there's different ways to get it could be a newspaper or it would have been smoke signals and now it's social media. The core of it hasn't changed. The delivery method has changed,

but the core of it of human humans are humans are humans are humans. We talk about this, you know, I've talked to special force operators and we have this conversation all the time. They're like, just shoot to wound. I'm like, why would you shoot to wound? Why wouldn't you, you know, eliminate your target? And they're like because the target has friends and I'm going to turn one target into four. And I was like that's universal across the board. It doesn't matter if it's a 50 cow at 1,000 yards or if it's a bow and arrow at, you know, 20 ft. So it's these core parts of the human idea and the human existence that if you haven't gone to school and if you don't have these level of experiences, you're going to run into it. I I kind of feel like you're like a UX designer in a way in the sense of let me let me explain. There's so many times where someone who does UX, which is you as your experience, where they design this

whole great thing and you get this very well-trained UX designer, they're like, "Yeah, you're changing everything." They're like, "Why?" I'm like, "Well, people with clutter blind can't see that your stuff's in the wrong place. This can't be there. This is how people read." It sounds like branding is like the the grandfather of even that as well. It's like, "Okay, UX is cute. Let's talk about branding." You talked about the difference between a logo

and and and what was the other thing? Brandark. Thank you. a logo and a brandmark. It's so foreign to me. I didn't even know what a brandmark was still right now. What the hell is the difference between a logo and a brandmark? Okay. So, yeah. Well, because I I started to create what's called an authentic brand. So, I create start creating a glossery of distinctions and that's a lot of times why people haven't heard of this because it's own category I created over the years. So the point being is that a logo a lot of times people create a logo based on personality like okay I show my friends you know what you know my brother-in-law did and see if they like it or dislike it okay and you know ask them why and this and that but it's all based on the personality and a lot of times logos for example I call them a liability where they're not simple they're not bold enough they're not unique enough they won't work in black

and white so they work as embroidery all the way down to the app. It won't work from an app to a billboard. So, they miss a lot of the science to it. The second part that they miss is how it connects to the business. So, a lot of times I look at something I go, well, what does it have to do with your business? What does it have to do what you just told me five minutes about your business or what it's about? How to connect quote unquote your quote unquote identity to your consumer or customer? And um Oh, go ahead. So, I have I have a really important question about this one because I always have how the hell did they get here when it comes to one specific brand and I'm curious if you've got a famous brand. I'm going how the hell is that related? For me, the one that stands out is Starbucks coffee.

The the logo of the mermaid holding up her legs that is cropped. It's a very famous, you know, it is what it is. How in the name is Zeus's butthole did they get from there to there? And I guess my question is, if you've got a logo that you've already been in bed with long enough, it's been part of your brand for 10, 15, 20 years, pivoting your logo or your brand mark is not easy. How does someone who didn't know that you existed a couple years ago, "Oh crap, we have a, you know, a mermaid with her legs spread wide open as our logo. Good god, it might work. It might check those boxes.

It might, hey, it looked, we can embroider it. It looks good in black and white. it's it's clear, but it doesn't align with our brand. It doesn't align with the personality of our brand. How does someone and go through and say, "Okay, how do I fix this? How do I do this? How do I pivot this?" So, that's a great question. So, it's really interesting because when I present and I'm, you know, teaching and presenting, I'll show case studies of where a company had a logo to a brand mark. And one of them is Starbucks, by the way.

So, Starbucks, if you look at it, it's very like handone. It looks very junior level. Oh, it looks like no, someone's done it, you know, in their basement. And then you could see the transformation over years. Okay. And I knew they're going to have problems. I first saw Starbucks and it took like three more reiterations. Probably cost them millions of dollars to redo all the storefronts and everything associated with all the marketing, all the advertising, all the product itself. Right. Right. To redo it all. So what they had was really So God, this is a loaded question. So let me just finish this discussion. So, so, so you, so they had the evolution from a logo to a brand mark. And the the one that was prior to the one that they have now, it's called an emblem mark where they chiseled it down graphically so it looked beautiful, look simple to digest, but they had the words integrated into the actual mark

itself or what's called a pictorial mark of the mermaid. The problem with that is that as you start to migrate, you start to grow your company into different countries, guess what? That needs to be that that need to be translated from English to Arabic or Chinese or whatever right?

It would look like a whole different brand. It look like you just got knocked off,

right? So, what they did, which is I'm a firm believer in that, and I actually started to figure that out building brand marks god years ago. The point of being is this, you want to separate the two. So the mermaid is now separate from the words. So now the the mark itself, the pictorial mark, the picture is filling it up in a sense. You don't have to have words anymore,

right? It could stand on itself. You have something now that's universal and all languages. It has nothing to do with the words. It has to do with an image,

right? So that's how that one was able to do it um to keep that story. like you know how he came up with the book cuz you know Moby Dick D we keep that part of the history behind it but the point being is that now it actually is a brand mar so now we don't have any limitations where we have a lid on it and we keep be now we're able to grow that into any part of the world for that matter because now you have a strong brand mark. So, one of the questions that people are going to ask about branding, especially now that we live in a world where you can't get domains anymore, where you can't get the name that you want, and that that influences a lot of the name of the company, where it's like, oh, I want to name my company the bed podcast show ever, and I'm sure someone owns that that How do you survive when you're building your brand where you fall in love with an idea and you've got your brand mark and all of this, but the

domain's not available? Do domain domain names matter anymore? Absolutely. Before you even think about the name though, you really want to think about the position. Do the strategy session to figure out what is your position, who's your target market, what media you plan to be reaching those target market. And when it comes to naming, there's five basic categories of creating a name. And fir and first of all, you want to create a name that really don't you don't want to have more than three syllables. And then ideally, you don't want to have it more more it's more than two words. Why? Because it goes back to how we think. If if you want someone to remember who you are, you got to make it simple.

It's true. The dot bomb error, they make up all these fanciful words. Well, you're never going to be able to find a website because

you can't spell the name thing. Remember that whole that whole error was like total chaos. Like what a freaking nightmare. But anyways, um yeah, you do want to have it where so let's go back to like there's five ways to create a name. There's Janera, which is not trademarkable, which a hotel in Las Vegas tried to create the hotel called Main Hotel. They battle god knows how much money they spent trying to figure out if they could trademark that name. They could not because it's a common word. Then you get into, you know, um um descriptive describing like Motel 6 when it used to be $6, right?

Not anymore. Okay. And then you get in suggestive and then you get into arbitrary like apple to fruit and apple to computer, right? Then you get in the fancful totally made up like Exxon.

Now here's the beautiful thing. As you start to go up the chart of to the, you know, the words arbitrary or fanciful, you're to have something that um separates you from the pack. It will take more to get people to know who your brand is. But the beautiful thing is you will leave the pack and get more known and be more unique to be more memorable. like Lululemon for example, right? Or

as much as we don't like I didn't like the word at the beginning, Google, right? But the point but the point being is that as you move up the chart. So, you know, there there are plenty of words that when we when we come up with names, we come up like literally when we work with pies, we come up with hundreds of names and my job is to look at if we get a high percentage of dotcoms because there's ways to articulate what kind of name should you be creating based on a strategy and from that DNA starts to build out well what are all the possible names that we could create based on that strategy to actually best represent that brand position,

right? There's there's so much that you've shared here. There's so many things that even with I'm in the middle of a renaming and a rebranding now where I'm like, that's got to all change. There's so much that people just don't know. How do people find you? How do people, you know, sit down and get some of this knowledge and and maybe save themselves millions of dollars in, you know, not trying to brand something that they can't brand and and make it so that their company can scale up into that next level? How do people find you? How do they sit down with you? How can someone pick your brand and get access to you?

Um, I make it really simple. I give away my my mobile number and my my uh personal email.

So, my email is howard@howcreative.com. Okay. Howard@howcreative.com. hwcreative.com. And then my phone number is 310844251. And then we'll set up like a 10-minute discussion. And if you want to, you know, go through quote unquote, it's up to you. If you want to go through a full assessment, then what I do on my website, I sell it for $2,500 for an hour. But through a code using ho, you hit the coupon, say apply, it brings it all the way down to $500. And I'll do a whole valuation, a whole assessment on what you've been creating.

Show you the gaps who here's what you here's where what you just told me where you want to be and who you are. But this is how how you're representing yourself right now. And what is that gap?

So if someone doesn't have the ability to to call you up or jump on the website, are there other resources you have that people can get access to? Are there tools that you like to use?

Yeah. So I took this time to write a book. It took me five years. I think it's been about 15 years and it's called authentic branding.

It's sold, you know, not so much in bookstores but globally. But the fastest way people could find me is on Amazon under authentic branding by Howard A. Limb and they could find my book. Now the reason why I create this book by the way because at the time there was maybe five branding books when I wrote this book and um there's one book I really admire called Strong Bands by the way. Um it really inspired me. But the point being is that none of these books really had any exercises.

Yes. and they don't want to divulge any of their trade secrets, which you know, that's fine. I get to respect that, you know. And I said, well, I'm here to help out as many companies as possible. I'm going to actually say, okay, what do you do to create your values and how do you test your values and then give examples and da da da. So, that book is not just a book to read. It's based on uh actually how do you actually think about your own brand

and it's available on Amazon. It's on Amazon. Yeah, need to go to Amazon after this. Okay, perfect. I really appreciate I just wanted to make sure we had that.

I really appreciate you coming on and changing so many different things. Just the idea of, you know, for me the biggest takeaway was that it's a personality that you're building that. I was like, "Oh crap." I literally every company I built in scale, I just went, "Oh my god, I left so much money on the table. Holy Moses." So yeah, there's Oh, darn it. I really appreciate it. Thank you so very much for coming on. I really appreciate you blowing my mind.

Yeah. No, this has been really fun. This has been really, really fun. Thank you.

Success isn't about having the perfect strategy on paper. It's about executing imperfectly and iterating based on real feedback. While others spend months perfecting their business plans, winners are out there testing their assumptions with actual customers.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Sell More w/ Authentic Branding - Howard Lim"?

In order: 0:00 Branding, Broadway, DreamWorks, LA Marathon; 5:00 Branding, Brand equity; 10:00 Branding, Brand architecture, Brand equity, Brand icon; 15:00 Branding, Mood board; 20:00 Branding, Mr. President; 25:00 Brand mark, Branding, UX Designer; 30:00 Brand mark, Branding, Moby Dick; 35:00 Authentic Branding, Branding, Lululemon, Main Hotel.

What is mentioned in this The Proven Podcast episode?

53 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Branding, Brand mark, Broadway, LA Marathon, DreamWorks, Brand equity. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Sell More w/ Authentic Branding - Howard Lim"?

The episode runs 41 min; the transcript is about 8,558 words in 104 timestamped sections.

More from The Proven Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated November 19, 2025.