Building fundraising into a branding strategy from the start After a business plan, the next most important step in creating a business is to develop an all-inclusive branding strategy. Michael Doyle the CEO of Brand Iron follows a priority, four-part process for helping his clients create their brands. He explains to Dan Humiston why it's important for fundraising to be baked into a brand's design from the beginning. Produced by PodConx MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston Brand Iron - https://brandiron.net/ Michael Doyle - https://podconx.com/guests/michael-doyle Recorded on Squadcast
Building fundraising into a branding strategy from the start
After a business plan, the next most important step in creating a business is to develop an all-inclusive branding strategy. Michael Doyle the CEO of Brand Iron follows a priority, four-part process for helping his clients create their brands. He explains to Dan Humiston why it's important for fundraising to be baked into a brand's design from the beginning.
MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
Brand Iron - https://brandiron.net/
Michael Doyle - https://podconx.com/guests/michael-doyle
Dan Humiston : [00:00:00] today. At MJ bulls, we are joined by Michael Doyle, the founder of brand iron, Michael. Welcome to.
Michael Doyle: Hey, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Dan Humiston : Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you. And for our regular listeners they'll know that we normally feature cannabis companies that are raising capital or companies that are looking for cannabis companies to invest in Harvard ed on today's show. I thought we were going to take a slightly different direction, and we're going to talk about some of the important things that companies can do.
To make themselves more attractive to investors and brand iron is a multi-faceted branding and marketing agency, but why I thought Michael would be the perfect fit for today's episode. The way, , their agency builds fundraising into their brand development. And Michael, when you're developing a brand's identity, why do you feel it's necessary to develop a concept that not only engages the audience, but also positions it to achieve the long-term goal, [00:01:00] including funding?
Michael Doyle: Sure. , , so a little background, I sold a brand new business, my own company. I sold it as a part of a IPO roll up work for a public company for a number of years. And it was awful, absolutely awful. um, what I realized was that.
, if you really want to achieve your goals and objectives, you need to figure out what the end game needs to look like. So how are you going to bring into position a company from the onset? What does that brand positioning look like? And then do you need to package that and communicate that
even if, and especially if you're going out to get capital to help you get to those bigger picture goals and objectives. And so that's kind of what we really specialize in is how do we help companies brand and position themselves communicate what that message is, what the desired outcomes are trying to achieve, and then help package that into like a cap raise deck and communicate what your brand story what's wants to be, what your financial story wants to be.
Why and [00:02:00] how this is going to be a, normally a great brand, but how and why this is going to be a great investment. And you need to take a look at that from day. One of what that brand position is and what your financial stories and outcomes are going to be in order to attract the only the followers, but the investors that you're going to need to help your brand and your company and get the capital you need to get to where you want to go.
Dan Humiston : so well said. I know you said some from day one, but I. I often would recommend to people that it doesn't mean to be day one. If you have a company that's been going along and you just don't have a consistent brand, it might not be a bad idea to retool and build the whole package. I'm sure you have some companies that are starting and have to start over.
Michael Doyle: all the time. I mean, we, done hundreds of these things over the years now we see all the time this isn't working. Can you help us out figure out the, what the magic formula is in order to be able to [00:03:00] get our brand story and our financial story down. That will resonate with investors and track the capital that we need to be able to get.
And so we've worked on hundreds of those and I would say probably at least 30 to 40% of those are retooling of ones that haven't produced results.
Dan Humiston : Yeah, that makes sense. You know, you know, you don't always get it right on the at the first time at the up to the plate. But, you know, I, I like when I look at your website, you have a sort of a proven formula within your organization. Maybe you could briefly walk us through the four steps of your process.
Michael Doyle: Yeah. So, we have four steps. Strategize is the first one create, which is where we're creating the brand the brand story in, or a capital raised stack. , how are we going to take that to market? Or at what we call activate, and then we have the fourth step was analyze. And so analyze what's working, what's not working.
And how do we make sure that we're doing what we need to do to [00:04:00] achieve the desired outcomes that our clients are, , working with us to achieve. And so, as an old business strategy are all cap raised X nothing's perfect out of the. And so you figure out you put your best foot forward, as far as what your brand story is, what the financial story is, you package it and you make it look super good because, if you're trying to raise a bunch of money, they want to know is like, we're going to invest this money.
Do you know how to sell it, sell your idea. Can you sell it to the consumers or sell it to the retail channel or the, , whatever you're trying to sell to. And you got to make it look good. Like you really don't what you're going to do with it. And then you've got to be able to communicate that message and that story how, , with that capital, here's what we're going to be able to do with it.
And you've got to sell that, that vision of what you're trying to accomplish the capital. They're entrusting you with.
Dan Humiston : Yeah, I, I completely agree. I know it's silly, but little things like having different font on your website versus your pitch [00:05:00] deck or different colors , those are things that can trip you up.
Michael Doyle: A hundred percent. , and , it's not just the look, it's the finer details because at the end of the day, we're asking in most cases, pretty substantial sums of money and they want to make sure. That we're all professionals here and that we have our act together.
We have the quality control. We have the systems and processes in place to be able to execute our game plan. And that includes making sure that it's the brand, it's the font. It's the colors. the, I know it's grammar. It's spelling. It's the math within the deck. I mean, it's stupid things sometimes.
Right? They get you up. And so how do you make sure that you're, you're close attention to all these little details are part of the bigger picture story that's going to help you become successful?
Dan Humiston : You're right. The spelling errors.
Michael Doyle: Yeah, crazy. Isn't it? I mean, but it happens
Dan Humiston : , it definitely [00:06:00] happens cause you're, you know, you're a business owner you don't have, sometimes that's not like on the top of your mind, but you know, these copywriters they're like, oh my gosh, the punctuation's incorrect.
Throw it the deck out. What are some other things? What are some other things that you've seen? You've seen so many brands, what are some other mistakes that they make when they go out to try to raise capital?
Michael Doyle: probably the biggest one we see is an addition to telling a really good brand story, which is, I think kind of fundamental for a lot of brands, but the biggest one we've seen is not having what we call good financial store. Where they don't have really good performance where they kind of have mapped out.
This is how much capital we're asking for. This is how we're going to deploy that capital. These are the financial projections. We think that we're going to be able to produce. here's why we think we're going to be able to produce that and put it into a , nice what we call financial story with charts and graphs.
It's easy to understand. Spreadsheets. , I can't tell you how many, decks I've seen with [00:07:00] spreadsheets synergy. You want to pull your hair out? Because I mean, no one wants to look at spreadsheets. Okay. And so how do you tell that financial story in a nice, clear, and concise fashion that tells why this investment is super attractive, you're going to be able to perform and produce these results and be able to tell that story.
In a matter of a very short period of time. That's where we see most pitch decks or most companies fall down is they cannot tell a really good financial story.
Dan Humiston : They get caught up in the weeds, so to speak no pun intended or pun intended, but, they get caught up in the unnecessary things. And before you know, it they've lost , is that some of the
Michael Doyle: Yeah. Normally they get caught up or they, said like get a couple of weeks, a hundred percent or they don't know what type of investor they're going after. Some are looking for income and, or, , cashflow, others are looking [00:08:00] for a long-term. Cap ex or multiply X, down the road. so understand what you're trying to do with this investment and how you're going to be able to make that a attractive investment for , who you're trying to get capital from able to tell that story nice and succinctly without 20 slides just on that, tell it within a half dozen, six to 10 slides that really tell like, This is super attractive.
You guys have your act together, you know exactly what you're trying to get accomplished. It looks great. And man, I have a lot more confidence because you can tell that financial story in a nice and succinct fashion.
Dan Humiston : Well, how many, slides or, or, or pages in the deck you usually try to keep.
Michael Doyle: There's a core presentation we'd like to say is what's the story. then the financial story, like to see that within 12 to 20 slides , and, and I, I call all the time where you anticipate the questions, you know, what questions you're [00:09:00] going to get from where they are, either investors potential purchasers.
And if you know what those questions are, you can anticipate those questions. And then you're going to put a bunch of more. In the appendix and say, I'm really glad you asked that question. I don't have that answer in the deck itself, but I've got a drill down on this, spreadsheet or this chart.
Let me go in greater detail and answer your question for you. And you've got all those questions into the appendix and rated to go at a moments. Notice. So if you had the core presentation in 12 to 20 slides, and I tell people, knock yourself out, if you need 20 more slides after that in the appendix, just in case, when we're preparing for these things, we do a lot of pitch presentation coaching to is what the top six to 10 or 12 questions are going to be have them already prepared.
And show, oh, glad you asked that question. , let me flip back there and let me show you that, or let me show you this, or [00:10:00] let me show you that if you know what those questions are going to be, and I can give you a presentation a couple of times you'll know what the typical questions are going to be, and you're going to be able to go back into that appendix, pull that out and say, it is.
, let me go over that with you and then kind of show you what that wants to look like.
Dan Humiston : I love that. I haven't heard anyone talk about the appendix. That's a great suggestion. That's a great suggestion. Well, Michael, you're based in Denver now, your agencies in Denver, I'm sure you work with, come with companies all over the country. Have you worked with cannabis
Michael Doyle: Yeah, we work with cannabis companies. We've worked with, , packaging companies in the cannabis space. worked with some edibles and extracts companies. We've worked with CBD companies. cover it. We've named with a lot of spectrum in the cannabis hemp realm.
Dan Humiston : Well, it, it just, the fact that you're in Denver makes me know that you, you at least understand that the complexities of our industry, which are crazy. Well, this has been a real pleasure having you on [00:11:00] the show and we'll have all of brand iron's information in our show notes. So if anybody would like to follow up with Michael and, you know, learn more about maybe retooling their brand or, or launching their brand using brand iron, I highly recommend it.
Michael has been a real pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for
Michael Doyle: Hey, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.