Mark de Grasse is the former president of DigitalMarketer. He has over 20 years of experience in various marketing positions, ranging from content development and digital marketing to brand management and business strategy. Mark was the host and primary educator for DigitalMarketer’s Content Marketing Master Certification and Social Media Mastery Certification. He has created over 3,000 marketing tutorials ranging from content production to website design to marketing strategy.

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley converses with Mark de Grasse, founder of the AI Branding Academy and former president of Digital Marketer. They delve into the critical importance of branding for e-commerce businesses, especially those facing fierce competition and rising costs on platforms like Amazon. Mark shares his framework for enhancing brand performance and emphasizes the shift from product-centric to brand-centric strategies. He also discusses leveraging AI to improve marketing efforts and streamline processes. The episode provides valuable insights for 6-7 figure business owners aiming to scale to 8 figures and beyond.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

1. Shift to Brand-Centric Strategies: Move beyond focusing solely on product quality by developing a clear, quantifiable brand vision and creating a cohesive brand story. This shift helps build an identity that resonates with customers, making your brand more memorable and distinct in a crowded market.

2. Leverage AI to Strengthen Your Brand: Use AI tools for content creation and market analysis to streamline processes and ensure consistency. For example, developing a custom GPT for your brand can help maintain a consistent voice across all platforms and assist in onboarding team members with aligned messaging.

3. Define Your Unique Value Proposition: Articulate what sets your brand apart, such as expertise in a niche area, and set ambitious yet achievable goals, like becoming a market leader in your segment by a specific date. This approach makes your brand more relatable to customers and positions you as a trusted, knowledgeable resource.

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interviewed the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King. Adam Heist and Michael E Gerber, author of The E-myth. Today I am speaking with Marc De Grasse, founder of the AI Branding Academy and former president of Digital Marketer. Com today, we are going to be talking about a framework that Marc has built that can elevate the performance of any brand and how this is going to allow you to differentiate yourself amidst all the overseas competition that continues to increase year over year on Amazon. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure ecommerce companies to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your brand to the next level, my team and I bring hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or someone you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com.

Josh Hadley 00:00:51  That’s e-comm with two M’s and let’s turn your dreams into reality. But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Marc De Grasse. As mentioned before, he is the former president of Digital Marketer, and he has over 20 years of experience in various marketing positions, ranging from content development and digital marketing to brand management and business strategy. Mark was the host and primary educator for digital marketers, content marketing, master certification, and Social Media Mastery certification. He has created over 3000 marketing tutorials, ranging from content production to website design and to marketing strategy. So with that introduction, welcome to the show Mark.

Mark de Grasse 00:01:23  Thank you. Josh. Great intro.

Josh Hadley 00:01:26  Well, hey it’s easy when I’m just talking all about you. So, Mark, I’m genuinely excited to have you on the show here today because, I first heard you present at, you know, you’re at Kevin King’s billion dollar seller summit and the Level Up summit you were speaking at. And what you shared there, I think is, like, truly game changing in terms of like, where is marketing headed in the future? Where is branding headed in the future? You came out with a book.

Josh Hadley 00:01:48  You’ve got decades of experience in the marketing world. And, so I think you have a very fascinating approach, and you’re speaking to an audience of e-commerce business owners, right, that have found success primarily through Amazon, but it’s getting harder and harder every year, right? Amazon continues to raise their fees. The margin squeezes on. You’ve got increased amount of competition coming from overseas competitors that are just driving prices downward. So Mark, where do you think we begin with this conversation and your decades of experience with the plethora of issues that these e-commerce business owners are facing in today’s environment?

Mark de Grasse 00:02:19  Well, I think number one is don’t panic, you know, because that’s usually people’s first take, especially when it comes to like AI and change. But the fact of the matter is that it’s happening with every business. And this is really the first kind of great revolution we’re having in digital marketing, because we’ve been kind of stagnant and doing the same thing for the last like 10 to 20 years. Same methods, same platforms, same methods of business and everything else that we do.

Mark de Grasse 00:02:41  But it’s I think AI is big disruptor, of course. You know, we’ll talk about that quite a bit. But then the world itself is changing, like consumer habits are changing. consumer expectations are changing. consumers have less money, you know, and now now platforms like Amazon are opening up to, you know, increasing the amount of vendors that they have available. And I think Google is essentially going to have that same effect happen, due to how they’re starting to push advertising like they’re starting to automate, which means that a lot more businesses are going to be able to use ad platforms like Google, which, you know, everybody thinks like, oh, anybody could run a Google ad, but no, anybody can’t run a Google ad. And to date, it’s taken, you know, specialist, a marketer who’s a professional in paid media advertising in order to run campaigns effectively. But now because of AI automating things, that’s going to, you know, that barrier is going to go away, where now everybody can advertise.

Mark de Grasse 00:03:25  So, no matter what industry you’re in, you’re having massive increases in competition. But the good side of it is that we have AI now, which can essentially uplevel all of your marketing in a million different ways and allow you to compete in this kind of new, highly competitive, fast marketplace.

Josh Hadley 00:03:42  I love that. And, Mark, you’ve been studying and really doing a huge deep dive into AI and how smart business owners should be adopting AI to influence their branding, to influence the content they come out with, and to really get a head start on everybody else. Because, you know, I think that the hard thing with AI is it’s like it’s breaking down a lot of barriers that once were there. I know, especially for a lot of the oversea sellers, that were not native English speakers. Right. You could read their listings on Amazon or whatever marketplace, and you’re like, this is this is, not formal English. And you could very easily see, like, okay, this is this is like an Asian style, like speaking to us.

Josh Hadley 00:04:20  Right. And so that used to be an advantage. But with AI like that is now gone. It’s evening out more of this playing field. And so there’s some pros and cons with AI. So Mark you’re telling us there’s probably more upside to AI. Then there are the cons of leveling the playing field for everybody. So tell me like if you’re talking to an e-commerce business owner and they do want to get ahead, they want to stay ahead, how do they incorporate AI into their marketing so that they are able to, you know, take advantage in and fight off the competition?

Mark de Grasse 00:04:46  Yeah. And that’s, it’s kind of funny because you think, oh, AI and it’s going to be super high tech and you need to use these awesome tools and great product videos and blah, blah, blah. we’re not there yet. So it’s, I think those types of tools are coming. Probably, you know, developed in mid to late 2025. but right now, what I allows you to do is kind of traditional basic marketing tasks just a whole lot faster and a whole lot better than you could before.

Mark de Grasse 00:05:08  And so instead of thinking like, okay, you know, say you’re an Amazon seller and you want to create a solid brand and a real online presence, using your website is essentially the home base where you put all your content. you can do that and you can create loads of content. The trick is that now you have the ability to propagate, kind of the core concepts and what we call the brand vision of the founder into everything that you do, which is not been possible in the past, because if you wanted to say, incorporate your your brand vision, okay, we’re a customer centric brand. we really care about everything going right for the customer. And we’re customer, customer, customer, and once you set up an operation, say you have ten employees and you’re hustling and you’re trying to keep up and you’re doing all these things, there’s no way that you’re managing your brand, and really reinforcing that core message of customer centricity. And, you know, you just couldn’t do it before. But with the AI, what you can essentially do is set your brand in place, set your values and place your mission.

Mark de Grasse 00:05:54  You know everything that makes your brand your brand. And now you could propagate those ideas through every process you have in your business. So now okay, set my vision. All right I’m onboarding employee. How should I onboard an employee. Oh hey let me go to I, I’m going to install my vision. And now I’m going to produce a manual that allows me to train the employee properly, reinforcing our brand principles, reinforcing all our messages, you know, and and just something the thing I just said is skipped by the majority of small businesses because there’s just so much work to do. And honestly, you don’t know how to do HR tasks. Doesn’t matter now. You could be a professional HR person and a, you know, professional. Maybe not professional, but, you know, competent enough accountant and bookkeeper and competent enough customer service manager and competent enough shipping, you know, management and, you know, QA and whatever you want. All of these things you could actually do using AI, which before you just couldn’t because you would have to hire a person to do that.

Mark de Grasse 00:06:38  And then when you hire people for something that you yourself aren’t capable of, now they’re the ones setting the brand in place, and they’re the ones making the decisions, and they’re the ones their values are the ones that are actually getting input into everything, not yours. And so the biggest advantage you have with AI is essentially centralise all your business decision making and now propagate those ideas to everybody that you hire, whether that be a contractor or employee or marketing agency, in order to get things done, which, you know, again, would take you years of effort. And for most businesses you think like, well, I’ll get to that when I’m bigger, I’ll get to that when I have time or when I have enough employees, or when I have a it’s like, no, you you don’t have time for that right now because the, you know, like we’re talking about just this increasing competition means that you’re only advantage as, say, a US based seller is your brand, is the content that you put out, is, you know, the care that you put into your customer service or your product selection or whatever it is.

Mark de Grasse 00:07:27  That’s the only advantage you have. And so and what this all does, you know, you can say you increase the sales and whatever, but what really does is reinforce the brand and build authority within the brand, which will then translate into sales because they know, like, oh, okay, Josh, I always go to Josh because I know they deliver on time. I know they care. They send follow ups, they fix problems, they do all these things that I really care about. So instead of next time I need to buy something, I’m not going to just go to Amazon Search. I’m going to go to Josh’s shop because I can trust him. And then. And then, you know, everything that I talked about are really these off Amazon tasks. But now you’re not only reinforcing your brand on Amazon, but you’re building a, you know, independent brand. You could call it on your own platform. And now you’re safer than you were before from being completely dependent.

Josh Hadley 00:08:07  Yeah. Mark, I think that that is such an important communication, I think important aspect that we should double down on.

Josh Hadley 00:08:12  Right there is just the branding and a lot of e-commerce business owners, especially if you got started on Amazon, you were kind of product first, right? Most I would say 90% of the guys that went through the different courses started selling products on Amazon. We’re just looking for a niche to get into. It wasn’t here’s a brand, here’s a mission. I’m going to build a bunch of products around this mission to go serve a specific audience. I think that’s a rarity. It may happen, but it’s more of a rarity. So what I see happening is a lot of people have launched a lot of products. Sometimes these products are in different verticals. You know, we’ve been guilty of that at the same time. But it’s been like niche opportunity rather than brand focus. But now I hear the tide is shifting and everybody is talking about brand, brand, brand, brand, brand. That is your differentiating factor, especially when you’re on a marketplace like Amazon. And I think here’s a little twist to this mark that I’m going to challenge you on.

Josh Hadley 00:09:05  When people go to Amazon, I would I’m surprised the number of people that will buy our product, and then they get it in the mail and then they see, like the picture of our family or whatever on the product packaging. And they’re like, I had no idea, you know, I got this from Amazon. It’s like, do you not clearly see our family name in the brand on Amazon? But so many people still think, like, how is Amazon carrying your product? Like they think they’re buying from Amazon. They don’t understand that there are brands that sit behind a lot of these. So I think it’s kind of like a it’s a challenge because yes, branding is important. But then at the end of the day, people sometimes don’t even know that they’re buying from a brand. They just think they’re buying from Amazon. So with that in mind, Mark, how can an e-commerce business owner double down on their branding if they’ve been more products centered first and they’re kind of playing catch up right now.

Josh Hadley 00:09:51  Tell me why branding is so important to become a differentiating factor, and maybe give me some ideas based on your 20 years of experience of like, unique ways that, you know, people could pitch a brand if they’re kind of needing to formulate it from the from the beginning?

Mark de Grasse 00:10:04  No, that’s a great question, because I think for a lot of people like, you know, branding itself and you say branding, people just think of like a logo and maybe some colors and maybe some fonts that you use and the website name, and that’s branding. And it’s like, no, no, branding is every single impression that you make. So your example of, you know, even just putting a postcard in a box where it’s just like, and from our family to yours, like what you’re doing is reinforcing that you’re not just, you know, an anonymous seller who’s just trying to make a buck, but you’re a family that put this together, selected the product, or you build the product from scratch, and you know, this is us.

Mark de Grasse 00:10:31  You know, that’s what you’re buying. And you could do that with, you know, your product selection specifically. But like you said, it’s like people just like, oh, I’m just going to choose a random set of verticals because I found a deal on that. And my profit margin is good on this and whatever. But branding to me is know what’s your product selection strategy? What your product categorization? You know, a lot like content because I come from, you know, making magazines and I’ve done content forever. It’s essentially the same thing. Like, how does this product reinforce the purchase of this product, or how does the group of products reinforce that your company is the specialist in this category of product? Because that’s branding. That’s not, you know, randomness based on your own profitability. And you could say you’re a profit first company. Not really good for public branding. So if you can number one, get your vision, like who are you? Why are you doing this thing? Nobody cares that you want to make lots of money.

Mark de Grasse 00:11:16  Nobody cares that your dream is to buy the land up the hill and blah blah blah. that’s you and that’s fine. But to me, money is like air and water like, yeah, you need it. All right. Are you telling me how hungry you are is not going to, you know, change anything about me? Well, I need to eat. And so if you could take that away, take your personal ambition away and just say, hey, what’s the point? What’s the point of you being here and doing this? Because if it’s not money and your achievements and about you, it’s about what? And so for most people, you know, like you can say, okay, we’re building a family brand to support other families like okay, that’s a vision right there. So what’s the best way we can do that? Okay. We’re going to do you know if you’re in print it could be we’re going to reinforce weddings. We’re going to reinforce, you know, the cycle of life, babies, you know, babies born, funerals.

Mark de Grasse 00:11:56  Like we’re just going to this is us. We support the cycle of life, and we do it through paper. And so it’s like, okay, now I get it. Now I know exactly which products to buy. When people buy one thing, you could you could reinforce the story that you have that, oh, hey, this is the fifth part of the seven cycle system that we have, you know, try to reinforce with our products. And now you’ve taken something that was just a bunch of products, and now you’re reinforcing it with story and background and credibility. And now that’s something that people can attach to. Because, you know, with these the onslaught of these vendors that are all basically just competing on price, they don’t have that. They can’t have that because it wouldn’t be believable, number one, where you’re like, okay, random company that that produced these, you know, slippers that just.

Josh Hadley 00:12:37  I can’t even I can’t even pronounce your brand name because you, one, two, three bunch of excited letters to go get a super fast trademark approved by the USPTO because it’s gibberish and nobody can actually pronounce it like that.

Josh Hadley 00:12:49  Ain’t no brand name, which I love seeing when I see that on Amazon. I’m like, good, you guys are wrecking yourself because you’re making it ten times easier. A US consumer is going to be able to see through that garbage and be like, well, the ones, the ones are I or whatever, I can’t even say this. No. And then you’ve got something else that you could pronounce and you’re like, okay.

Mark de Grasse 00:13:08  Yeah, well, even if it just looks a certain way, because it’s a lot of times, you know, and we don’t realize we’re doing it like a lot of the branding elements that we’re, you know, consuming all the time are almost invisible to us. We don’t notice it, you know, and I always go back to, like, Starbucks making you literally change the language you use when you walk in the door in order to order, because it’s not small, medium, large, it’s tall, grande, venti. And it’s like, that’s that’s branding.

Mark de Grasse 00:13:28  Like they just changed how you talk, you know? And so if you’re able to do that, that’s why for me, like when I get into branding, it’s not just like, okay, I got my vision. But then for the terms I want to use, what’s my definition of all these different industry terms. And so with my business I ran an academy. That’s what I started with. I’m like, you know what? There’s no real standard definition for a marketing funnel. And how does the marketing funnel relate to a marketing campaign? And has a marketing campaign relate to a brand strategy? And there’s all these components just floating around. And so my first step was really like, okay, what does all of these things mean to my organization? And then I started to define it. And so when you’re getting into this kind of branding, you really have to say like, okay, well I want to be an authority. Like my vision for my company is I want to be an authority in branding and marketing that essentially standardizes terms so that we can all speak the same language, and then we can build a better community that eventually elevates the entire marketing profession.

Mark de Grasse 00:14:16  That’s my vision. And so with that vision, I could say, okay, well, what products or services would reinforce this vision of elevating the marketing profession? Oh, well, I could just, you know, come out with your one on one courses, get people into it. Then I could get more advanced so that they know what to do. I can install my, you know, theory of ethics and morality onto the profession itself so that I could reinforce goodness, which is another principle that we have. And so, you know, it just makes decisions easier, which is the funny part of branding. Everybody skips it to be like, no, I have to sell. I have to make a $10,000 buy next week, which means I just need to get the product up. I need to just buy that email list from some jerk online. I need to just swamp everybody that I can find with the offer and then, oh, numbers. It works. And, you know, for the most part, yes, those kind of temporary marketing strategies can work, but it’s at the expense of long term brand equity, which is why it always comes back to branding.

Mark de Grasse 00:15:04  It’s like, I don’t care what trick you have. And honestly, in marketing, the entire industry has been built off of these hacks and tricks and basically, oh, how do you hack the algorithm and how do you blah blah blah? It’s like, what are you doing? Okay, are you planning on not being a business in six months? Because that’s a good way to make a buck and then have nothing to follow up with because you burnt out the whole market that you just marketed to, and or you just have no credibility because brand was not even a part of anything that you sold. So it’s a it’s a shift for some people. It’s a shift for the profession, really. Because what I’m trying to say is I don’t care what you did this quarter or next quarter or even this entire year, because if it’s not reinforcing some kind of centralized vision for what you’re trying to achieve. You’re probably going to fail. You know, you’re going to get bored or the market’s going to shift or all these different things.

Mark de Grasse 00:15:47  And and what I’m talking about is really just purpose. Like, what’s the purpose of everything that you do, which if you don’t have that and if your purpose is so weak, you know, like I want to be a millionaire, then it’s not going to work either. So it’s a shift, but it’s a it’s a good shift because now we’re talking about long term as a short term.

Josh Hadley 00:16:02  Mark. Are there any good brands that you would recommend following in terms of the way that they’ve laid out their branding? Maybe people, maybe some brands people could look to for a sense of inspiration that, like, these guys have crushed it. Go and follow and see what they’re doing.

Mark de Grasse 00:16:16  Yeah. You know, if you want one that I think has done a really good job. Not that I agree with their message, but Patagonia, like if you if you want a brand where it looks like they really live, what they sell, then Patagonia is just like, oh crap. And a lot of these outdoor brands are really infused with the passion people have for the hobby.

Mark de Grasse 00:16:31  So you’ll have to find your own based on your industry. But that’s a really good one where you can see it no matter what, what you know, banner you’re looking at or what product they have, or everything about the design, the materials, the production, the customer service, the online presence. You know, how they treat their online communities like all of that is dialed in and you have some other ones and you know, it does seem like fitness and stuff does a good job. but you have, peloton. Peloton’s another one. Where you have the product has been kind of iffy. but they have a fantastic community, and they’re constantly reinforcing the message of community working together, you know, getting fit. And here’s the healthy benefits. and it’s all, you know, good and long lasting. And even though, like a company like that has had some massive bumps in the road. So if you want to bump in the road, like try to get sued by, like, you know, tens of thousands of people, that’s a bump that would typically destroy companies.

Mark de Grasse 00:17:18  But because of their brand, because of their community, they’re able to weather the storm, even though they’ve screwed up quite a bit. And so that’s that’s another kind of side benefit where, okay, you got the products in line. And it doesn’t have to be complicated either, because if you’re saying like, okay, we’re environmentally sound, we’re sustainably sourced, we’re blah blah, blah, blah, blah, that’s a difficult one. If you just said like, you know what, we just love yellow products. You know, you want something yellow. I wear the ones. I just love the color. The more I can put into the world, the better. And so everything you do is yellow. Like, that’s how simple it could be. So, you know, even though I always quote, like these complicated, expensive brands, it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Like, just have something where people look at your brand and they’re like, oh yeah, that’s the blank brand. Because if you can’t say that, like that’s the oh, that’s this brand, because very few people are gonna remember your name, you know, at first, but they say, oh, that’s the yellow brand.

Mark de Grasse 00:18:03  Like, oh, they just love yellow, you know? And my niece loves yellow. So I always go back to the yellow shop and that’s where I buy myself. You know, that’s it’s not that hard.

Josh Hadley 00:18:12  I love that is I love that simplicity. And I also love that you touched on like that brand truly does become like an anchor when you do have to weather really difficult times in your business, because they do have a it gives you a sense of purpose, but be hopefully, ideally, you’ve been able to build a community around your products in a following and brand evangelists and ambassadors that are willing to go to bat for you. And I think that’s where that’s the future of Amazon, The people that win over the next 5 to 10 years on the Amazon have solid brands, and they’re driving traffic off of like outside Amazon traffic to their Amazon storefront. And people are specifically looking for their products that I think is who’s going to win, especially as AI continues to change things in the Amazon search algorithm.

Josh Hadley 00:18:51  But Marc, we can go down that rabbit hole. But I think what we should focus on here is what you kind of presented at Billion Dollar Seller Summit, and you shared kind of a framework that Amazon brand owners, e-commerce brand owners could implement in their business. You almost have like a walk through. I don’t know if you want to share your screen, but kind of give me the lay of the land and rehash what you presented there, because I think that’d be super helpful for our listeners.

Mark de Grasse 00:19:13  Sure. Yeah. It was actually pretty simple. It was basically like, build your brand shop, you know, which I’m sure everybody has heard that before. Like build your shop, build your shop. But branding is actually super easy. There’s only like three graphics you have to make. You should have a good looking logo and a good message. But at the end of the day, if you just brand your shop, that already puts you above a lot of other companies who don’t take the time to do that.

Mark de Grasse 00:19:31  And personally, it might just be me. But when I’m on Amazon, I’ll always go to the person’s shop because I want to see like, okay, what’s the product mix like, you know, is it look professional like are the or even the product listings like are they do they speak the same way each time? Can I understand them? And all of this that I’m talking about is essentially customer training. You’re training them to okay, here’s what we look like. Here’s our colors, here’s all these different aspects. And so I basically and I’ll give you guys a link I just produced these templates to show people okay. Just drop things into this box on Canva. And then all of a sudden you have a good looking brand. And so I’ll share the link, but it actually has the the presentation that I gave. And then the other big part was and this is how we start, every branding project was just brand vision, like, what’s the point of what you’re doing? And when I say brand vision, I’m not just saying like, we want to change the world.

Mark de Grasse 00:20:13  I always tell people it has to be two things, two major parts of it. It’s ambitious and it is quantitative. And so if you, you know, if it’s not ambitious, it’s not going to inspire you. It’s not going to inspire anybody else your customers, your investors, your employees. It’s lame if it’s not ambitious. And the quantifiable is basically you have to have an end date and you have to have a number in mind if your goal is to serve 10,000 families across America, that’s great. Now, you could say that to people. We’re trying to serve 10,000 families across America. Oh, that’s that’s ambitious, you know, and then you, you know, make it, you know, and that’s actually the quantifiable part, too. And then the only other part is just the time limited where you’re saying, like, okay, it needs to be ambitious, needs to be quantifiable. It needs to be, you know, it needs a deadline. So you can say by 2026, like, oh, okay, now I understand where you’re going and what you’re going to achieve and when you’re going to get there.

Mark de Grasse 00:20:57  Now, I can take that brand vision and I can propagate it to everything. And this is really what I’m talking about is marketing strategy. Because a lot of times when people think like, well, how do I make a good projection of what I want to make? that’s how you do it. You basically set the goal, you analyze your existing sales and performance, and then you just apply the two together. And people say, like, I’m not good at math. You don’t have to be, this is very simple math and even ChatGPT, if you put this information in, I want to make, $10,000 in sales. This is my target market. I currently do, you know, a conversion rate of, you know, 10%. And here’s how many leads I typically get, and here’s how much work I put into it. And literally you put this into a single prompt and it’ll spit out a formula. It’ll say, hey, well, based on this number and this number and this number, you need to get, 5000 clicks onto your Amazon store per month.

Mark de Grasse 00:21:41  And now now you say, okay, well, how do I do that? And then if you derive your entire strategy just from that one vision, the 10,000, you know, families across America by 2026, now all the numbers come into place. And now there’s no ambiguity about like, okay, well, what actually works? It’s like, no, you know, we make what we call the performance dashboard, and we basically track our leading metrics where we say, okay, here’s how many website clicks I need. Here’s how my unique visitors I need, here’s how many, you know, if you’re a higher end product, how many leads I need, whatever it is, and then you can backtrack from there. So even though what I’m talking about is like a lot of abstract branding type things, you it sets the numbers in place and then you derive the actions from that versus I just got to do things, I got to send a million emails or I gotta, you know, post a million things.

Mark de Grasse 00:22:21  It’s like, who cares? Like you’re not tracking it like randomly, you’re going to get some sales. And if you did the tracking and you actually know where they come from, you probably find out that it was just like a single ad worked on a single day, and that really hit it off. Or some influencer talked about you once and then, oh, look, I got a bunch of sales. So yeah, it’s, it’s a little bit of work, I would say. But number one is just brand your shop, just start their brand new shop, come out with your vision. And so if you want, I can actually walk you through the vision. It’s it’s super fun. Let’s do it. We can do it for you.

Josh Hadley 00:22:50  So to our listeners, come check this, video out on YouTube. Mark will be sharing his screen.

Mark de Grasse 00:22:56  All right, so this is the Amazon brand new playbook, kind of landing page. This is that presentation that you mentioned. it just has some, some basic Canva templates.

Mark de Grasse 00:23:03  but these are size specifically for the Amazon shop. so if you click on these, you’ll actually see, like, oh, it’s just my logo with one background image and it’s a box logo. Like it’s it’s not hard. especially if you’re, you know, if nobody’s doing anything like just doing these basic things, we’ll have a lot and then I’ll put the brand vision creator in here. And the brand vision creator is, you know, again, the first step we use, we basically at a branding academy, we call it the eye Brand Blueprint, which is like 100 page document And it has, I think like 140 prompts that you run in order to get the answers to build this entire framework. But it all starts with this one piece, which is brand vision. So all you have to say is I need to create my brand vision for my company. And this is what industry is your business brand in. And we could use you, Josh, if, if you want. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:23:45  Let’s do it.

Mark de Grasse 00:23:45  All right. What would you categorize yourself.

Josh Hadley 00:23:47  So we would be a stationery brand.

Mark de Grasse 00:23:49  Stationery brand? Right. You’re in the stationery industry. Question two. What is your business? Provide your customers. Here are some options to consider high quality notebooks and journals. And you could actually just respond with whatever you want. But no matter what, like the way we make GPT is it gives you a, you know, checklist, a bunch of potential answers just to simplify the process. So in this case you have high quality notebooks. So go.

Josh Hadley 00:24:10  Ahead. We would do. So the response to this would be calendars planners educational posters event party invitations. So broad array party invitations.

Mark de Grasse 00:24:25  Now if you wanted to because I was talking about that product categorization. we could actually drill into that in this GPT if we want to. So we’ll say, before I answer the next question. Could you please assess my last answer and create a list of potential categories that my offering would fit in? And this is this is the thing with AI that I really like, that, you know, you don’t have to use it like you’ve always used programs.

Mark de Grasse 00:24:55  Because a lot of times when we think of like using AI, we’re expecting it to give us everything, like all the all the questions we want. And it works differently in the sense that, no, you don’t have to go off the answers or the questions. You could just ask whatever you want and it’ll still provide answers. So. So in this case, it came up with a list. It said based off your offering calendars, planners, educational posters, and event party invites, here’s a list of potential categories that your products could fit into. Organizational stationery, educational stationery. Event and celebrity celebration. Stationery. Personalized stationery or decorative stationery. What would you say fits just so that.

Josh Hadley 00:25:26  So here’s now that I’m speaking to a branding expert in yourself, I’m interested to get your take on this because really it could be either of those top three. Right. And that’s kind of the challenge that I told you about before. We were definitely more of like a product first business when we first started.

Josh Hadley 00:25:39  Right? It was like find the niche. And then we just went all over the place. Right. So we’re not just a party goods company. That’s kind of actually the way we started. But then it is expanded much more since then. Right? And so we’re not just an organizational company, we’re not just an educational company. So maybe a question I have for you, Mark, is like, at what point does it make sense to maybe create like subbrands within a bigger brand? And I think that’s a little bit more complicated. But give me your take on that.

Mark de Grasse 00:26:03  That’s a great question. And now what you could do, and this is I’ve actually used this in the past with my, the agency that used to have where I was like, I’m serving too many industries. I had like 24 industries. And I was like, I one, I don’t want to work with all these people. And two, I can’t standardize any of my processes because everybody is so different. And so I just looked at the list and I said, okay, who do who’s, you know, spends a lot of money with me.

Mark de Grasse 00:26:23  And then I looked at, okay, who have I enjoyed working with? And then, you know, what’s a what’s a balance of those two features. And for me, I came up with, health care providers. I was like, I like doctors because they spend a lot of money. They don’t ask a lot of questions. I get creative freedom to do what I want, and everybody wins. And so I actually created a brand specifically for that while I still had my brand. And so that’s tip number one is don’t kill anything that you’re doing that’s working because you’ll always think like you’ll put all your hopes and dreams into the new brand, which I’ve seen too many companies do. They’re like, oh yeah, I’m going to stop doing a good job over here because this new thing is going to crush, and it’s like, it probably will. However, it’s going to take 6 to 12 months. So, I think that coming up with a single niche is a great idea. and in the meantime, what you can do is essentially just categorize your products, even if you’re duplicating them into multiple categories.

Mark de Grasse 00:27:10  And so even if you’re doing, say, all of these, you know, different products can fit into each one of these, then you can still do that. You just have a focus on, oh, you’re an organizational. So organizational category and then educational category and events and celebration category. and all of them could duplicate all products. You’re just. You’re just basically guiding people, you know, to say like, hey, it’s organizational. And even if it isn’t special within that category, you could still categorize it like that. the other alternative would be to really look at your product, the differentiating factors, and then base the category off of that. So let’s say that you only use recycled paper. So it’s like okay we’re in the recycled paper niche. We’ll talk about sustainability. We’ll talk about you know lack of waste. We’ll talk about that. And so even if you don’t have like a set product category per se, you could have a feature niche where like, oh, we’re only this.

Mark de Grasse 00:27:56  So would you say you have something like that? That’s like, okay, this is the thing that really makes us different overall.

Josh Hadley 00:28:00  I’d say the the core thing that makes us different overall is the artist that sits behind it in that, oh, that’s my wife. Right. And so she is a former she went to school for early childhood education. And so that’s why we have a lot of, educational related products. But then she’s big into creating parties and celebrations so that thus we have all the events. And then she loves like planning and organizing. So that’s kind of where all of these ideas kind of stem from, to be honest with you is like her passions and what she’s always envisioned from like, marriage.

Mark de Grasse 00:28:30  Yeah. Well, that’s a huge niche right there, because what you have there is a curated, you know, artistically curated list of products and, and a backstory behind it. So if I were you, I would go for more of a story niche where you’re saying like, oh, you know, I started here in early education because I love kids.

Mark de Grasse 00:28:46  And I had to, you know, create all the stationery for all the different projects that we had at school. And so I ended up not having to source for that. And so I, you know, because I identified that need, I was the one that had to create it. And I’ve always loved this. And then you would just build that story. And so if you want to support people who really care about, you know, putting pen to paper because of the, you know, the connection that you have with the paper, that we’re the brand for you. And so and that’s, that’s enough right there. If you wanted to just start telling the backstory that would elevate your brand, substantially. And then you also have a PR angle that you can take on that as well. And a woman owned angle and and a woman designed and whatever you want to do. But that would be that would probably be enough where you don’t have to categorize any more than that. And then then eventually you could subbrand into, you know, the specific organizational one, the specific education, one specific event and celebration one, but you maintain that backstory and just make those subbrands make sense.

Josh Hadley 00:29:40  Love it.

Mark de Grasse 00:29:41  so yeah, so we’ll go ahead and say, see or the offering, the primary differentiator is that our products are a curated list, chosen specially by a former educator that really loves the concept of, communicating through print. There you go. I got pretty lazy with that. That wasn’t even what I wanted, but I basically get.

Josh Hadley 00:30:14  The idea, right.

Mark de Grasse 00:30:16  but overall, that would be that would be the brand. so as a brand. Sure. There you go. But even this process, like, you know, because a lot of times you think like, oh, I gotta, you know, go through all this work to get my head right around it. All you have to do with AI is just keep on asking questions like, keep going. If you don’t understand something, ask about that. You know, like like we just did where it’s like, oh, we don’t really, you know, that’s not really our specialty is just the different categories. It’s really how we find those products that make the product special.

Mark de Grasse 00:30:44  so you just keep asking, like, what makes us special? But what are things that could make a company special? Like, all those things will walk you through the path. but that’s really the benefit of AI is you don’t you don’t have to restrict yourself, to somebody else’s process. You just go off on your own whenever you feel like, so let’s keep moving. We’ll go to question three. Let’s define your core purpose based on your industry offerings and the unique aspect of your brand. Here are five example core purposes to choose from to empower organization and creativity through expertly curated stationery to enhance communication and learning with educators. Selected print products to inspire productivity and joy through thoughtfully chosen planners and educational materials. To celebrate life’s moments with carefully curated, high quality stationery, or to provide trusted, educator endorsed stationery that enriches lives through print.

Josh Hadley 00:31:22  Yeah. Let’s go with number one there.

Mark de Grasse 00:31:24  Number one. And again, if you don’t see the answer you want, just ask for more. Like that’s it’s so cool.

Mark de Grasse 00:31:30  Which is why people like people freaking out about I am like, it’s the coolest thing. okay. Question for now. Let’s, set an ambitious goal for your brand. Here are five options tailored to your industry offerings and core purpose to become the leading brand for curated stationery in schools and homes across the country. To inspire a million people to organize their lives through our curated stationery products. To revolutionize how educators and learners communicate through print. Becoming a trusted resource worldwide to be the go to brand for curated stationery that blends organization with creativity recognized in every major retailer, or to empower creativity and organization in 500,000 homes with our expertly curated products by 2026.

Josh Hadley 00:32:01  Yeah, I like the, you know, to inspire a million people and the time stamp there, but maybe combined with like number three.

Mark de Grasse 00:32:08  Yeah, I like that. So you can say, combine.

Mark de Grasse 00:32:12  numbers two and three.

Mark de Grasse 00:32:16  And again, when you do this, you can just say switch the number from 1 million to 50,000. Like that’s, you know, pretty simple.

Mark de Grasse 00:32:22  So to inspire a million people, including educators and learners, to organize their lives and revolutionize communication through our curated products, becoming a trusted resource worldwide. Perfect. And that’s it. And so and you can add the date in there. Right.

Mark de Grasse 00:32:34  Like, want to hit 1 million by the end of 2026.

Mark de Grasse 00:32:41  And that basically just adds that curated stationery product by the end of 2026. but again, even just saying that phrase or some, you know, variation of it when you talk to people is like, wow, this is a brand. Like, this is somebody with a mission and they know where they’re going. And, you know, don’t, don’t think that anybody’s going to remember this other than you. But when they hear it the first time, they’re going to be like, oh, that’s neat, I like that. That’s something I can attach, you know, emotion to. And now let’s go ahead and go. And so this and again this is just the first step in a long process.

Mark de Grasse 00:33:10  It does take, you know, a little bit to go through what we call the, the brand pillars. That’s just step one of nine. But once you have all this information, we essentially teach people how to put it into a custom GT. And then now, whenever any employee or anybody has a question that involves any of these aspects, you just give them the link and you’re like, hey, we don’t need to talk about this because, just ask the AI. It’ll give you the answer if I’m not available.

Josh Hadley 00:33:31  I like that. So ultimately, what you’re saying is, like the core is to build a custom GPT that understands knows your brand so that anybody that you hire or train can go there to that custom GPT and ask questions and say, hey, I need to create new images for X, Y, and Z product. You know, give me some recommendations. And then it’s spitting out like, you know, it’s incorporating that vision that we just talked about and the underlying mission and values of the brand.

Josh Hadley 00:33:55  Is that the gist of it?

Mark de Grasse 00:33:56  Yep. It’s basically taking the well, setting the principles in place and then stepping back because, you know, we’re humans, we change constantly. And our answer to your question might be completely different on Monday than it was on Friday. And so what it leads to is a massive inconsistency, even from the top people that the owner of the company who has the most to gain. If everything goes well, he’ll still or she’ll still just spout out junk because we are just emotionally driven. And so, you know, if you don’t, if you want to make sure the consistency, this is the best way to do it, build the brand bot you can call whatever you want. And now I don’t need to be on fire. Like I don’t need to be inspired every day as the leader of my organization, because the AI is going to tell you what I carefully thought through, and put into place in order to, you know, propagate my my brand to everyone.

Mark de Grasse 00:34:40  And so it makes hiring easier, makes decision makers decision making easier. And now there’s no more excuse, really, for not maintaining your brand.

Josh Hadley 00:34:49  Mark, I absolutely love this. So I’m gonna put you on the spot here. We did not talk about this before we hit record, but is there a framework or maybe like a a template that you could share, to help us understand. What is that what is the template look like to build that custom GPT? I know you mentioned there’s like nine pillars, but do you have like a Google doc or something that you could share just as like a framework?

Mark de Grasse 00:35:08  Yeah. Yeah, we it’s actually just a simple article where it just says here’s, here’s what we’re doing. So I’ll send that to you and you can share that. You have a course to it’s called How to Build Your Brand Pillars. And it’s just a series of nine guides where it’s just like click here. All right, you got this. Now get.

Mark de Grasse 00:35:21  This one.

Mark de Grasse 00:35:21  And now get this one.

Mark de Grasse 00:35:22  And it actually just walks you through the process. So it’s I’ve walked through businesses with it. It takes like an hour to an hour and a half. And then all of a sudden you have this set of information. And then most of the things that we do at the academy, it just asks before you do any, oh, you need to make a, you know, a podcast, what are your brand pillars? And then you input your brand pillars and then now, now you’ve said you know everything in place because it knows who you are and knows what your mission is, what your values are. And then now that goes into the process and now everything is consistent. So it’s it’s pretty simple. And yeah, I’ll have an article if you guys want to check that out. And then if you want to actually make them just take the course or you know, then you’re set and it gets much more complicated because for sure, the other thing is things like music selection, like if you’re making a video product video like what’s the background, what background music best represents your brand? Okay, that you got that place? Okay.

Mark de Grasse 00:36:04  Let’s talk about you do some talking head videos like what is your background look like. Is it is it reinforcing the brand or is it taking away for the brand? I don’t know, but lighting should you have? What smells should happen when people walk into your office? Like all of these are actually aspects of branding that, very few people do. You know, we always talk about, oh, Apple and we talk about Nike, we talk about these huge brands, and you’re like, you want to wait until you get to to $1 trillion brand to go ahead and start doing this crap. It’s like, no, you should be doing it. Especially doing it day one, because one customer could make an enormous difference to your business. You know, depending on what business it is, or 100 customers or whatever. But if you don’t set these things up in the first place, like you’re you’re missing out the opportunity to essentially gain these people people’s trust. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:36:44  Mark, this this has been fantastic.

Josh Hadley 00:36:46  as we like as we wrap things up, is there anything that you feel like we haven’t talked about that you really need to drive home the message to to our seven figure e-commerce entrepreneurs.

Mark de Grasse 00:36:55  You know, I’m going to reinforce the content, you know, because a lot of people hear content and they think like, oh, what a tool. I used to make a bunch of crap content. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about good content, like was useful, valuable content. and also what, you know, there’s infinite topics. So a lot of people, when they hear, like, make content, they’re like, well, I don’t want to write an article about, you know, how to clean your hiking boots. because there’s a million articles about clean hiking boots. It’s like, no, if you haven’t answered every question your potential customer can have, then they’re getting the answer from a competitor. Is that what you want? Is that going to help your business? No, no, it’s gonna help your business.

Mark de Grasse 00:37:28  So content is literally like you have to answer and define everything, every single aspect. Because if you haven’t, you’re relying on somebody else and they’re getting the traffic, not you. So I would say, do content, do good content and, and make sure it’s useful because the other side of the content that I always say is, is it’s reinforcing your customer, you know, support without you having to pick up the phone. Yeah. And honestly, and the reason why, you know, it always comes into AI is because eventually you’re going to be able to power a very useful AI with your data set. And if you don’t have a data set, then you’re not going to have a very unique AI. And then people just go somewhere else to get the answers. So it’s it’s reinforcing the future without you having to actually understand what’s going to happen.

Josh Hadley 00:38:07  Well articulated mark, well articulated.

Mark de Grasse 00:38:09  So I was like, am I too long? Do I, you know, too many words.

Mark de Grasse 00:38:12  To explain these things?

Josh Hadley 00:38:13  No, this is great.

Josh Hadley 00:38:14  And it’s a deep topic. And so here would be as we wrap things up, I’d love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. So here are the actionable takeaways that I noted. So number one is create a true brand. And if you have not established that vision and you don’t have a meaningful purpose or vision, I love what you shared. Mark. I think that’s really important to drive home is like, do you have a number that’s measurable and do you have a time frame that’s measurable as well? That is one of the most important things that I think an entrepreneur can incorporate into their brand vision to say, like, how can we inspire 2 million, 3 million, whatever your number is by a certain date, and to do what? And that then allows everything else kind of like sets that, that base. And so that would be my recommendation. And you guys heard kind of a little mini consultation for our own brand, right? Where we have been primarily like product first, if you’ve been product first, figure out that brand message behind it, because over the next five years, that’s what’s going to set you apart as a competition increases and is margins decrease.

Josh Hadley 00:39:11  Okay. So action item number two I’m going to say build that custom GPT bot that understands your framework. So like Mark said like go through his course or try building it yourself, but create a, a custom GPT that anybody on your team can go back and reference to understand the true mission and vision and the core values that sit behind your brand. it’s funny, as I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, as soon as they start scaling and their teams cross 50 people, 75 people, and they’re no longer they don’t they don’t have personal relationships with each of their team members. They realize how things start to break down. And so I love what you drove home. The point of is have a GPT that is never tired, is never, you know, out of energy or whatever, but is constantly driving home the same key message even as people come in and out of the business. So I think that that sets a really good foundation to be able to scale to those eight figures and beyond. And then last but not least, Mark, you talked about driving home content.

Josh Hadley 00:40:06  So if you’re not putting out content or having influencers, creators, brand ambassadors, putting out content for you, I think that’s where the big miss is happening. Because if you’re not doing that, you’re not driving home who you are and being able to educate people. Because I think as times change and as people get tired of the cheap crap that they buy from overseas sellers, it is going to be like, who sits behind this brand? And Mark, you already talked about it yourself. You are the type of customer that actually clicks on the storefront site on Amazon, and you want to learn more and you’re going to go check out their social media profiles. So if brands aren’t doing that and they’re just like, I’m only narrowly focused on Amazon, I think you miss out in the long term. So those are my three action items. Mark. Anything else you would add to those?

Mark de Grasse 00:40:45  No, no, I think if you did those you’d probably be ahead of like 99% businesses. Like it’s you know, what I’m trying to teach is essentially advanced marketing and branding concepts without you having to understand any of it, like just do it and and it’ll be amazing.

Mark de Grasse 00:41:00  Like, you’ll you’ll be okay.

Josh Hadley 00:41:02  Brilliant. All right, Mark, now we’ll transition to our final three questions here that I ask every guest. So number one what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Mark de Grasse 00:41:10  You know what? this is a new one that actually just finished recently. It’s called The Untethered Soul, by Michael Singer. And it’s it’s incredible, because it really puts in place the, you know, the purpose of purpose. if you want to look at that and breaks down, like all of existence in a way that is extremely applicable to branding, I was related everything to branding, but it’s really about like, how do you how do you find what you are, and then how do you propagate it, doing whatever you’re going to do. And I think this book is super short, but really breaks down the concept of essentially combining our, you know, spiritual, mental and physical goals all into like one process. And, and if you if you read this book and try to apply it to your business, you’ll probably do really well.

Josh Hadley 00:41:49  Fantastic. I think we’ve actually got that book recommendation one other time from somebody else. So interesting to hear a second, second vote for that one. Oh it’s.

Mark de Grasse 00:41:56  Incredible. I was like, just mind blown with like, every chapter.

Josh Hadley 00:41:59  Love it. All right. Mark, second question. What is your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using that you would recommend other people need to be utilizing?

Mark de Grasse 00:42:06  You know, in terms of just like, what if I was still doing my marketing agency, what what made everything like way easier? I would say Midjourney, you know, Midjourney is a AI art generation tool, but if you prompt it properly and I’ve kind of built like a branded Midjourney prompt generator, you could essentially make infinite amounts of branded images, for whatever you want to use it for. And I’m not saying like products are a little special, but the background imagery, like basically is a replacement for stock imagery. It has saved me so much time because, as you know, I did website development.

Mark de Grasse 00:42:34  I used to use I have folders with tens of thousands of stock images, just because finding a good one is really hard. And so I just started collecting it for a million years. but yeah, I’d say Midjourney is probably my favorite right now.

Josh Hadley 00:42:44  Excellent recommendation. And again, another pitch to, you know, you’ve got those prompts. So I think that’s what it’s garbage in, garbage out. And so I think people being able to find you Mark, learn more about the prompts that you’ve been able to like tailor specifically to your brand, I think is truly going to be the difference maker because everybody talks about all this I stuff, and it’s only as good as like the plan that you have behind it. And so I love that you have that that kind of tailored in. All right. Third and final question here, Mark. So who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following in? Why?

Mark de Grasse 00:43:15  You know what? Scott Cunningham, he has social light.

Mark de Grasse 00:43:17  He speaks all over the place. But he actually worked with me to produce, one of the certifications we had at Digital Marketer and, that the e-commerce certification, but he has the e-commerce tree of life is the framework that he talks about, but breaks down the whole process of e-com really easy. And it’s all infused with, kind of long term good marketing strategy, but still simple enough where anybody can get it. Even if, you know, say you’re just a solopreneur and you’re trying to make, you know, a few bucks. He’s pretty awesome. So, yeah, he’s got a great recommendation.

Josh Hadley 00:43:45  He’s a new one we haven’t heard from before. So this will be really good. Somebody good for other people to go check out and follow. Mark. This has been excellent. I’ve got you’ve got my mind, turning now I’m, I’m constantly thinking about. All right. What’s our what’s our new branding and vision going to be. So Mark, if people want to learn more they want to figure out what you got going on with your courses.

Josh Hadley 00:44:02  They want to learn how to build these custom GPUs. Where can people find you and follow you at?

Mark de Grasse 00:44:06  So my website, masterclass.com, that’s where I put my more philosophical type stuff like predictions about the future. Really for practical application you go to AI Branding Academy. That is my educational institution. We’re actually now doing live events and we have a bunch of online courses, free tutorials, like basically, I’m trying to give everybody the step by step approach to do themselves, whether they’re a creative marketer or not. These will still be useful because I am so simple. And then then we’re actually trying to we’re partnering with other companies that could do the done for you that will refer you to. But really my goal is to train anybody how to do marketing. And with AI, I could actually do that now. So very excited.

Josh Hadley 00:44:44  Yeah, highly recommend it. Mark has 20 years of experience. He’s created lots of courses in the past. They’re a digital marketer, as we heard before, and so Mark knows his stuff.

Josh Hadley 00:44:53  So I highly recommend you guys go check out those AI tools and what he’s talking about there. So Mark, thanks again for your time.

Mark de Grasse 00:44:58  Thank you Josh. Always fun.