How a brand-new idea (adopt a pistachio tree, share in its harvest) went from a pitch-deck sentence to a brand people could understand, trust and buy as a gift.
This is how Abdi Moinian first described his business to me: “A company that generates social, environmental & financial benefits by creating a new agro-farming crowd platform, where adoption of trees and investment in agriculture is made accessible to the masses.”
Every word of it is true. And unless you’d already decided to invest, you probably drifted off somewhere around “agro-farming”.
He knew it, too. When I asked what worried him most about talking to his audience, he said: “Them understanding the concept in a few seconds…how do we get them interested?”
That rare thing – a new idea, but only a few seconds to explain it
MyTreehood lets people adopt a tree on an organic farm, follow how it’s growing, and take a share of what it produces, either as income or (eventually) as the harvest itself. You could be closer to nature without having to buy a field or don wellies. You could start with just one tree.
There was a lot to fit into those few seconds. Abdi’s key messages covered the fun of adopting a tree, a way to diversify your investments, learning about orchards and agriculture, organic farming that’s good for the soil, a share of one of the healthiest nuts going, and jobs for the people who work the land. All of it mattered to him, and he was trying to say it all at once.
Two very different people, one tree
The audience research narrowed Abdi’s “anyone, really” into two people with very different reasons to buy.
The first I called the Non-Conformist. She has money to invest and no interest in taking the traditional route. She wants her investments to be environmentally and socially credible, she’s nervous about risk in a new area, and (honestly) she’d quite like something better to talk about at parties than her pension.
The second was the Thoughtful Gifter, looking for a present that isn’t mass-produced, that shows she put some thought in, and that lasts longer than a box of chocolates. She may not know much about investing at all, and she’s not really interested in learning loads about it right now.
The same research turned up three reasons either of them might walk away:
trust and financial risk,
not understanding how it works (the investing or the farming),
and a healthy suspicion of anything calling itself “green”.
Everyone else was telling one story
Then I looked at where else those people might go.
Treedom sold tree gifts with a personal touch
Ecologi was all about doing good for the planet, with no investment angle at all
Ecotree talked about sustainable forestry
The Walnut Fund focused on the money, leaning on jargon like “generational wealth” and “democratize investments” to sound credible.
The other brands were each telling one story about trees. MyTreehood could tell the whole story (the money and the meaning) without the jargon.
So the Brand Messaging Guide set out a voice that was educational, friendly and fun, and three key messages to carry everything else:
Invest in something more interesting than tech stocks, and more tangible than bitcoin
Get closer to your food
Do something good for the planet with your money
It also set out how to answer the three barriers.
Explain the whole process, from handing over your money to the end of your tree’s life, as simply as possible
Use trust markers (partnerships, credentials, clear numbers on risk and return, behind-the-scenes content from the orchards)
And be honest about farming’s environmental limits, because that’s what makes the green claims believable
Trees with Benefits
Then we put the Guide to work on the website, including my favourite headline I’ve ever written.
The MyTreehood homepage headline
When the site launched, the homepage spoke to both buyers. For the Non-Conformist, a section called “Break free from boring” asked why you’d invest like your grandad. For the Thoughtful Gifter, there was a gift route right there on the homepage. “Farm without the wellies” brought in the part about getting closer to your food. And “How it works” walked through the whole thing in five plain steps, from choosing your tree to receiving your share of the harvest, because the Guide said the simpler the explanation, the more likely people are to trust it.
A long-lasting investment
The Brand Messaging Guide gave MyTreehood a clear sense of who it’s talking to and what they need to hear, so that three years on, every new piece of work still has something to stand on.
Over the last 3 years, Abdi and I have used it to build social media strategies, reach out to influencers, and create a gifting guide.
So more people can get closer to the soil (without wellies), and munch on their very own pistachio nuts!
Got an idea that’s hard to explain in a sentence?
If you’ve built something that does lots of good things at once, there’s a fair chance your audience is getting all of them at the same time (and remembering none of them). A Brand Messaging Guide sorts out who your thing is really for, what they need to hear first (the rest can wait), and how to show them they can trust you.
How a coach with a decade of happy clients realised her message was no longer working, and how a messaging audit discovered what her audience needed to hear instead.
Pippa’s first message about working together was a lot like a lot of messages I get from people…steeped in frustration that her business didn’t fit traditional marketing “rules”.
She’d been told, by more than one person, that a mastermind needs to promise specific, tangible results. She agreed with that in principle, she said, but also “I’ll be buggered if I can articulate the results.”
A decade of happy clients and no way to say why
Pippa runs The Disobedient Business Co. with Lucy, and the Disobedient Business Mastermind is the main event. It’s for ADHD and autistic business owners who’ve been at it a while. People join and then stay. One member had been there since September 2021, and others for well over two years. Pippa knew it worked, partly because “none of the people that are in the mastermind are dickheads, and they wouldn’t stick around if we weren’t doing something right.”
The trouble was selling it. She wanted to get it back to being “an easy sell”, and she told me straight that it was “def not landing in the current marketplace at all.”
The advice she’d been given was to hang the Mastermind on one thing, so it became a sales mastermind or a launch mastermind. But that was too narrow for what the Mastermind does, and a bit disingenuous. She was stuck.
Which was why she needed me.
Five years of tweaking at the edges
She’d written the messaging a couple of years earlier, and since then she’d tinkered with different sections, sharpening and tweaking, without changing the structure underneath.
She could feel the gap, too. “We’re definitely missing the mark in terms of speaking to people the way that they need to hear things now, as opposed to maybe the way they needed to hear them in 22, 23.” She needed some kind of golden thread that would run through everything – something suited to the new context we found ourselves in in 2025 – a bin fire globally, cost of living crisis nationally, and everyone in the online business world finding selling more difficult.
Send me everything
The Messaging Reset is a week-long messaging audit for businesses whose messaging used to work and has stopped landing. I work out what’s still doing its job and what’s drifted, then map out what to say first (and who to say it to) right now, in a doc you can copy and paste straight from.
It starts with me reading everything, and I mean everything. Pippa took me at my word. She sent the website pages, her welcome email, a filtered view of every email she’d sent since April, her draft framework, onboarding answers from Mastermind members, a testimonials spreadsheet she was embarrassed about, and a brand-new doc she’d pulled together that morning.
Then we talked it through on a kickoff call, and I sorted what her people were dealing with into three groups.
There’s their brain, and the judgment, self-doubt and shame that come from being told one-size-fits-all and finding it doesn’t fit.
There are their ethics, and the bro marketing, manipulative tactics and toxic productivity they keep being told they need.
And there’s the vibe they’re looking for, which is a space where they can be themselves and find people like them.
Her voice was already doing its job for all three, and that part of the Reset map simply says “Do Not Touch!” The humour, the swearing and the generosity of it all stayed exactly where they were.
What needed work was the order things were said in, and who they were said to.
Knackered, and just trying to stay upright
Pippa’s people were the same ADHD and autistic business owners, allergic to blueprints and drawn to her for the same reasons as ever. What had changed was their context.
The old messaging assumed a reader who was angry and ready to burn it all down. Five years ago they wanted to rage against the system. Now they’re knackered, and just trying to stay upright. Most had spent a lot of money on coaches and programmes, and the cost of living had made every decision feel heavier. What they wanted to know was whether this could finally work for them.
Yes, they still wanted the world and unjust systems to change. But this Mastermind couldn’t just give them that – it actually had to make their business work, too. They were in a “put your own oxygen mask on first” situation.
So the Reset moved the lead from rebellion to relief. The core shift went from “This is a space for business rule-breakers” to “This is where your business finally works, because it’s shaped around your brain, not someone else’s formula.”
What you put in place of the rulebook
The ideal Mastermind member needs to believe two things before they’ll jump in:
“You can help me get the results I want.”
“I won’t have to leave part of me at the door to get them.”
Everything else in the map hangs off those two lines.
There’s a new value proposition for the Mastermind, the messages to lead with and the order to use them in, a clear signal that this is for people with three or more years in business, and a sales page opener written for someone who’s tired rather than furious. There are before-and-after rewrites of her existing copy, a swipe bank of lines she could lift straight into emails and posts, and five mini case studies built from what her members had already told her.
It all arrived as a Google Doc with a video walk-through, so she could copy and paste from it rather than squint at a shiny PDF.
“Ohhh, yeah that makes sense'”
“It all makes total sense,” she wrote, “and to be honest, both comfortingly and also fucking annoyingly (on me not you), 97% of it is stuff I’ve been circling for aggggges.”
That’s the bit I hear most often after a messaging audit. Most people have been circling the answer for a while, and they need someone outside the business to point at it and say yes, that one.
After years of the industry shouting about launch numbers and revenue, she’d come to believe her clients’ results were “too squishy” to count, even though she knew how much they mattered.
So we used the implementation call for exactly that. We triaged the sales page so the new messaging could go in without a full rewrite, planned content around each part of the messaging shift, and worked through how to show results from the testimonials and feedback she already had, without sounding “bro-ey”.
Seven weeks
The last time Pippa had torn her business down to start again, her website was offline for eighteen months.
This time she rewrote the whole thing, copy and design, in seven weeks. When she got to the two pages she’d been avoiding (the Mastermind page and the homepage), she brought me back in to red-pen the first and write the second. The Mastermind page she’d drafted was already a long way from the old one. It felt like a significant shift towards what the Mastermind offers, and the struggles her audience were dealing with right now, and I didn’t change much.
A few months later, Pippa joined me on an Instagram live to talk about the Reset. Without being asked, she made the case for it better than I ever have.
“Downwards of a thousand quid, I cannot think of another thing that would be better to invest in at the moment. If you are not saying the right things to the right people in the right way… you can put all the content out in the world that you like and it’s gonna be an absolute load of nonsense.””
Pippa Parfait, The Disobedient Business Co.
Circling the same answer for a while?
If your business works, your clients stay, and you still can’t quite say what you do for them.
Or selling has gotten more difficult, but you’re not sure why.
A Messaging Reset is a messaging audit that keeps what’s working, shows you what’s drifted, and gives you the words to put your messaging back where your people are.
Brilly’s Tone of Voice Guide: How a sports bra brand with a patent, lab results, and too many ways to describe itself found its positioning, its voice, and a customer journey that carried women from “not another sports bra” to checkout.
Claudio Storelli’s team designed their sports bra the way you’d design a trail-running backpack. You cinch a good backpack so the weight sits exactly where you want it, loosen it off for a walk, tighten it up for a run, and adjust each side on its own. When Claudio first told me about it, he described the moment the idea clicked as a slightly mad realisation: “we’re sending people to Mars”, and women with bigger busts still can’t get a sports bra that’s comfortable.
So they engineered one. It wraps around you, each side adjusts independently (because nobody is perfectly symmetrical), and in lab testing it outperformed every sports bra on the market. They called it Brilly, because the product is clever and they wanted the brand to be a little bit clever too.
Plenty of ways to describe it, none that landed
Claudio had the patent and the test results. He also had a problem. “I have many ways of describing what this does,” he told me on our first call, “but we need a way to nail it.”
The science was the obvious place to start, and the trouble was that the test results were, in his words, “very dry”. Look at how everyone else sold sports bras, and you got two options. At one end, the hardcore athlete running two marathons back-to-back. At the other, women having pillow fights with clouds in the background. Neither was the woman Brilly was for: “the smart, busy woman who squeezes a workout when she can”, then picks up the kids, grabs a coffee and meets her friends for brunch, all in the same bra.
Underneath it all was why the brand needed to exist. Women had told the team they’d stopped doing certain workouts, or stopped working out at all, because of what happened to their chest. Claudio wanted a brand that told them “you don’t have to hide, just go do it”, and put a smile on their face while it did. (He was also very clear it shouldn’t be pretentious. He hates pretentiousness.)
Finding the space between the lab report and the pillow fight
We started with strategy, because a voice with no position behind it is just a nice tone.
Everyone on the team filled in the brand discovery questionnaire. There were no customer interviews to draw on yet, so I went message mining for the words women with bigger busts already use about their sports bras: the uniboob, the straps digging in, wearing two or three bras at once, and the sweaty fight to get the thing off afterwards. The competitor research showed brands promising comfort or support or style, and nobody claiming all three at once, so that became Brilly’s ground.
The positioning gave Brilly a cause. Brilly rebels against bad bras on behalf of all women, and its lead message puts the blame where it belongs: “Your body is right, the garment is wrong.” Angela, Brilly’s fractional CMO, called the “on behalf of all women” idea “a powerful connective tissue community statement”, and summed up the strategy better than I could: “We want to create the community out of these people, not just spray and pray.”
A voice that can explain engineering over a martini
Then we ran a brand voice workshop with the whole team, sorting a long list of tone words into the essentials, the nice-to-haves and a pile we called “no, heck no”.
Brilly came out as a blend of two voice types. The Translator handles the science, so a patented engineering design becomes something you’d happily read on your phone in the queue for coffee. The Friend at the Bar keeps it human, a bit cheeky, and on your level (the Guide describes it as chuckling at the bar over a couple of martinis). Claudio had asked for copy that would “smirk like your clever, smart, cool friend”, and this is the voice that does it. The never list mattered just as much: Brilly is never embarrassed (boobs are natural, and the language says so) and never judgmental, because every body is worthy of a bra that fits.
Who she is, and what she needs to hear when
The first draft of the personas talked about bodies changing through the month, and Angela pushed us wider. Bodies change across a whole life, and a bra that adjusts can go with you through all of it, which also gives a customer a reason to come back for a new size. So the personas follow life stages: before children, pregnancy, postpartum, mums wrangling small children, perimenopause and menopause, and the women who practically live in their running kit. Each one has her own story and her own reasons to need Brilly.
Then we mapped the key messages to where she is in the buying journey. When she’s fed up but not looking, “Your body is right, the garment is wrong” and “We ripped up the rulebook” are there to stop the scroll. When she’s comparing options, the Translator steps in with science-backed support and engineered comfort for real life. When she’s ready to decide, “Move freely, live fully” shows her what changes, with the science repeated for reassurance.
Putting the strategy to work
The Positioning, Messaging and Tone of Voice Guide became the brief for everything that followed, and Brilly’s team brought me back for most of it.
The homepage and product page follow that same journey: the problems she recognises, how each one is solved by the design, everyday use cases from the school run to the sofa, and a route into the full engineering for readers who want the geeky detail. An ad landing page and personas for their ad campaigns came next.
Angela expected most people to need a few visits to the site before they bought, so the welcome email sequence was built to carry them there. Six emails move from Brilly’s story to real wearers, then the product, the engineering, a day in the life, and finally the guarantee, which opens on a line that came straight out of Angela’s comments on the Guide: “We get it, you’ve been burnt before.”
Then came naming the product, its technology and the new category Brilly wanted to own. I built two complete naming architectures from category design principles and tested every name against the Guide, plus guardrails we agreed early on. Nothing that sounded like constrictive shapewear, nothing that told women what shape their bodies should be, nothing cutesy or patronising about bigger busts, and nothing that would sound odd coming from a friend at the bar. (One strong contender fell at the last hurdle, after a certain billionaire decided to rename a social network after the letter X. Naming is a contact sport.)
What the team said
Angela read the Guide slowly, leaving comments as she went, and told me on our feedback call:
“I feel like you really understand what I think we’ve all been trying to put into words.”
Angela, Brilly
Tyler said: “I felt like I knew what the brand was now, and the story we’re trying to tell… it really helped me kind of visualize it.” Tom’s verdict was that it “seems really spot on”.
Claudio read the whole thing within half an hour of it landing in his inbox and replied, “I just read through it and it’s awesome!” A few weeks later he emailed again: “we LOVED working with you and are so proud of your work. I have already bragged about you to a couple of fellow CEOs and will continue to do so.”
Got something brilliant and no way to nail it?
If you know your work is good (you might even have the proof), and every way you describe it comes out too dry or sounds like everyone else, a Brand Messaging Guide is where I’d start. It gives you the position, the voice and the messages, and a plan for which message goes where. Brilly’s went from first questionnaire to draft Guide in about two weeks.
Comments Off on Inside a brand messaging guide: two coaches who couldn’t say why someone should choose them
by allwordsbypeta
A real brand messaging guide example, from two coaches who could describe their work but not why someone should choose them. What went into their Guides, and what changed once they had them.
A brand messaging guide is the document your marketing works from. It sets out who you help, the words they use, why they should choose you and how you sound saying it, so every page, post and proposal tells the same story. Executive coach Susan Sutherland and relationship coach Krystle Hearley each used theirs to write the copy they’d been stuck on.
“My brand is in a shift mode,” Susan told me. “I know who I work with and what I stand for, but my message hasn’t caught up.”
Susan Sutherland had spent nearly three decades in corporate leadership, climbing every rung of the ladder until she left as a senior vice president, and was now coaching executives standing at the same crossroads she’d once faced. She was very good at it. Most of her clients came through referrals, which meant she’d never needed words that could travel further than a conversation (referrals are lovely like that, right up until you want to grow beyond them).
Then she started planning a new website and a bigger presence on LinkedIn, and the gap got very hard to ignore.
“I can describe what I do,” she said, “but not why someone should choose me. I’m not bold or explicit enough.”
Krystle Hearley put it differently when she came to me with The New Way To Date: “I kept trying to explain everything, and ended up saying nothing at all.” Her business couldn’t have been more different from Susan’s, and the problem sitting underneath was exactly the same.
At a glance
Susan Sutherland
Krystle Hearley
Who
Executive coach, nearly 30 years in corporate leadership
Therapist-turned-coach, founder of The New Way To Date
Where she was
Established practice, mostly referrals, about to build a new website
Launching a new online dating community in a crowded market
In her words
“I can describe what I do, but not why someone should choose me.”
“I kept trying to explain everything, and ended up saying nothing at all.”
Inside her Guide
Two client personas, a competitor map, her voice type and archetype, elevator pitch, USP, bio, brand story, key messages and content ideas
Positioning statement, the tagline “Dating with Depth”, brand voice, customer avatars, copy templates and bios for press, profiles and podcasts
What she did with it
Finished her website, wrote new email sequences, kept LinkedIn and proposals consistent
Wrote her website, email funnels, blog posts and event descriptions
What is a brand messaging guide?
A brand messaging guide is the reference book for everything you write. It sets out who your clients are and the words they use, how you’re different from everyone else they might be considering, how you sound, and the key messages you’ll repeat across your website, emails, social posts and proposals. Once it exists, you stop starting every piece of writing from a blank page.
Mine are called Brand Messaging Guides (capital letters and all), and the two in this post are real ones.
Why do coaches struggle to explain why someone should choose them?
Most coaches can describe their work in detail, because they do it every day. Saying why someone should choose them is harder, because it means looking at every other coach a client might find and saying out loud what makes you different. Referrals hide the gap for years, because someone else has already done the explaining for you.
Susan’s version of this was a tone problem as much as a positioning one. She’d been torn between sounding “corporate enough” for the executives she serves and “authentic enough” for herself, and every time she sat down to write (on her website, in proposals, even in conversation) she’d pick one and feel she’d lost the other.
Krystle’s was louder. She had a therapist’s understanding of emotional safety and a properly different idea about how dating could work, and like a lot of people launching something new, she was trying to say all of it at once.
Neither of them was doing anything wrong (I promise). It’s just very hard to read the label from inside the jar.
What’s inside a brand messaging guide? Susan’s, section by section
Susan’s Guide works from the outside in. It starts with her audience, then her competitors, then her voice and personality, then the brand statements and key messages she uses everywhere, and finishes with the search phrases and content ideas that carry her message beyond referrals. Each section feeds the next one.
Her audience
We started with the two clients who turn up most often in her work. Alex, the Established Executive, is late 40s to early 60s, accomplished and privately wondering whether this is all there is. Jordan, the Restless Leader, is mid-40s to mid-50s, on the edge of a big shift and unsure what comes next.
Demographics are part of the story, sure. But a small part. The client interviews gave us the tension Susan sees every day (success without fulfilment) and, just as usefully, the exact phrases her clients use to describe it. We took some of those phrases straight from the Guide and put them on her website, so the right visitors knew within seconds that they were in the right place.
Her competitors
Next we looked at the rest of executive coaching, plus the therapy and wellness people her clients might also be weighing up. Susan spotted something straight away: almost everyone focused on performance or on healing, and hardly anyone did both. That became the heart of her differentiation, coaching the whole human inside the executive role.
Her voice and archetype
I map voice using Justin Blackman’s framework (I trained with Justin, who is frankly the king of brand voice), which sorts writers into nine voice types by cadence, rhythm, tone and vocabulary. Susan is a blend of the Yogi, calm and contemplative, and the Translator, clear and precise.
Then I use the twelve Jungian brand archetypes to get at who you are underneath how you sound. Susan’s dominant archetype is the Sage, the truth-seeker and mentor, which suits an audience of experienced executives looking for meaning.
This was the section where everything clicked for her. Once her voice had a name, the corporate-or-authentic tug of war stopped. “It gave me permission to sound like myself,” she said. “Before, I kept wondering if I should be more corporate or more spiritual. Now I don’t have to choose.”
Her brand statements
Built on that voice, the brand section gave her an elevator pitch, a USP statement, a social bio and a brand story, all ready to copy and paste, plus example phrases she can use as prompts for emails and social posts.
Her key messages
With the audience and voice in place, the messaging almost wrote itself. Three of her key lines:
“Holistic executive coaching that looks beyond your KPIs.”
“You don’t have to burn everything down to be happy.”
“It’s lonely at the top. I’ve felt it.”
They now run through her homepage, sales pages, emails and LinkedIn, so her audience gets used to her themes and knows exactly what they’ll get from working with her.
Her search phrases and content ideas
Finally, we mapped the search phrases and blog ideas that carry her message beyond referrals, like “Beyond KPIs: how holistic leadership drives both personal and professional success”. (No keyword stuffing. Susan wasn’t interested, and neither am I.)
Feeling extra nosy? Flick through Susan’s Guide below.
What does a brand messaging guide look like for a brand-new idea?
For a new business, the Guide has to define the thing before anyone has heard of it. Krystle’s pinned down what made The New Way To Date different and gave her ready-to-use copy for press, profiles and podcasts, so she could explain it the same way every time.
Krystle Hearley, a therapist-turned-coach, knew dating apps weren’t working, for her clients, for the people she saw repeating the same patterns, or for herself. So she built The New Way To Date, an online community that blends personal growth with meaningful connection. Less swiping, more self-awareness.
Over four weeks we worked through founder-led discovery (unpacking her vision and her own experience), voice of customer research to find the real pain points and the right language for them, and a competitor analysis to find the gaps The New Way To Date could own. Her Guide included:
A positioning statement and the tagline “Dating with Depth” (I’m still really proud of that one)
A warm, grounded brand voice
Customer avatars built around the emotional and practical reality of dating today
Messaging that holds emotional safety and self-trust alongside the wish for connection
Copy templates and bios she could use in press, on profiles and on podcasts
What changed once they had a brand messaging guide?
Both coaches started writing the things they’d been putting off, and stopped second-guessing how they sounded while they did it. Krystle wrote her website, email funnels, blog posts and event descriptions from her Guide, in language that finally matched the care behind her offer.
“It finally gave me the language I’d been reaching for,” Susan said.
She’s used her Guide to finish a website she’d been stuck on for too long, write new email sequences and content themes, keep her tone consistent across LinkedIn and client proposals, and get better results from ChatGPT, which now has her voice and messaging to work from. She also spends less time writing content and proposals, because the lines, phrases and whole paragraphs are already there to copy and paste.
Krystle said:
“You helped me go from having the whole world of dating and personal development to talk about – to having something clear and focused to say. That made a huge difference in my confidence, and in what I share now.”
Her audience noticed as well. The new positioning gave people something to believe in, and something to connect with.
How is a brand messaging guide different from a brand voice guide?
A brand voice guide covers how you sound: your cadence, vocabulary, tone and the phrases that are recognisably yours. A brand messaging guide covers what you say and who you say it to: your audience, your positioning, why someone should choose you and your key messages. My Brand Messaging Guides include both, because a voice with nothing clear to say is just a nice tone.
Where does the Regenerative Story Framework come in?
The Regenerative Story Framework is my messaging framework, built on the Heroine’s Journey. It treats the change your clients go through as something collective and ongoing, and it shapes how every Brand Messaging Guide I build now maps your audience and your messages.
Most story frameworks in marketing (StoryBrand included) are built on the Hero’s Journey, where one person conquers one problem and claims the prize. That’s an odd fit for coaching, where change is usually slow and rarely happens alone. I’ve written more about why the Hero’s Journey is the wrong model for your brand story, and the Regenerative Story Map is a free way to try the framework on your own messaging.
Questions people ask about brand messaging guides
How long does a brand messaging guide take?
Usually about four weeks, from the first discovery session to the finished Guide. Most of that time goes on research: client interviews, competitor analysis and listening to how you talk about your work. Two rounds of revisions are included.
How much does a brand messaging guide cost?
My Brand Messaging Guides range from $1,350 to $3,450, depending on how deep the work needs to go. We scope it together on a call, so you know the price before anything starts.
Do coaches need a brand messaging guide or a brand voice guide?
If you know what you want to say and just can’t make it sound like you, a voice guide may be enough. If, like Susan, you can describe what you do but not why someone should choose you, you need the messaging, and a Brand Messaging Guide includes the voice work too.
What do you do with a brand messaging guide once you have it?
Write from it. Use the key messages on your website and sales pages, the bios on your profiles and the example phrases as prompts for emails and posts. Give it to anyone (or any AI tool) writing for you, so everything sounds like the same business.
Ready to sound like the business you’ve grown into?
If you’ve built a business you’re proud of and your words still sound like they belong to an earlier version of you, a Brand Messaging Guide is where I’d start.
Comments Off on Bringing clarity to a bold idea in the dating space
by allwordsbypeta
When you’re launching something different in a crowded space, clarity isn’t optional. It’s the thing that gets people to pay attention – and decide to trust you.
The Situation: A smart, soulful idea with no clear message
Krystle, a therapist-turned-coach, knew dating apps weren’t working – not for her clients, not for the people she saw repeating the same patterns, and not for herself.
So she created The New Way To Date, an online community that blends personal growth with meaningful connection. Less swiping, more self-awareness. Less performative dating, more depth and trust.
The vision was powerful. But the message?
Krystle had all the pieces: a unique angle, a therapist’s understanding of emotional safety, and a deep desire to help people find love in a healthier way. But like a lot of purpose-led founders, she was stuck trying to say everything at once – and unsure how to explain what made her offer different from the rest.
“I knew I had something good. But I didn’t know how to talk about it clearly. I kept trying to explain everything, and ended up saying nothing at all.”
The Goal: A clear and confident foundation
Krystle needed help getting her message out of her head and into the world in a way that felt authentic, clear and actionable.
Together, we set out to:
Define what made her idea a truly different way to date, so it could stand out in a saturated market
Clarify the promise and positioning of the brand
Develop messaging that felt aligned with Krystle’s values as a therapist
Create language she could use confidently across her site, socials and content
The Process: Strategy combined with empathy
Over four weeks, we worked through:
Founder-led discovery to unpack Krystle’s vision and past experiences
Voice of customer research to surface real pain points and just the right language
Competitor analysis to identify the gaps The New Way To Date could own
A clear positioning statement and tagline (“Dating with Depth” – I was really proud of that one!)
A warm, grounded brand voice
Customer avatars that spoke to the emotional and practical reality of dating today
Messaging that balanced emotional safety, self-trust, and the desire for connection
Copy templates and bios Krystle could use in press, profiles, and on podcasts
The Outcome: A message with traction
With the messaging guide in hand, Krystle was able to write confidently – and stay consistent. From her website to email funnels, from blog posts to event descriptions, she finally had language that reflected the care and thought behind her offer.
★★★★★
“You helped me go from having the whole world of dating and personal development to talk about – to having something clear and focused to say. That made a huge difference in my confidence, and in what I share now.”
Krystyle Hearly
Founder, The New Way To Date
And her audience noticed too. The clarity in her new positioning gave people a reason to believe – and something to connect with emotionally.
Why it matters
In the relationships space, everyone’s promising “something different”. But too often, that difference gets lost in vague, identikit language. What Krystle built wasn’t a dating app. It was a safer, deeper space – designed by someone who understood how real trust is built.
This project helped her show that difference, and gave her a message she could grow into, not grow out of.
Is your big idea giving you trouble? Are you spinning between a million different angles? Are you unsure which message is going to move the needle with your audience?
Then you need my help. Be like Krystle and borrow my perspective for a while.
Comments Off on How I helped an eCommerce brand find its voice – and built a brand that feels like home
by allwordsbypeta
When two data-driven founders decided to move beyond Amazon, they knew a logo wasn’t enough. They needed a message they could stand behind – and a brand their customers could believe in.
The Situation: A product with traction, but no clear identity
Pulse of Home had a strong foundation. Over 75,000 customers. Great reviews. A growing team. But all of that lived on Amazon (so they couldn’t access vital customer data), with a placeholder brand that didn’t reflect what they were really building.
They were ready to move to a direct-to-consumer model. But they knew they needed to do it with intention – not just a prettier shopfront, but a brand people could actually connect with. When they came to me, they were clear on what they didn’t want. No vague storytelling. No overly poetic fluff. They wanted a message grounded in truth, empathy, and a deeper understanding of their customers.
The Goal: A brand that resonates – and scales
The founders weren’t trying to be influencers or interior designers. They were pragmatic, operations-focused, and working behind the scenes to create a brilliant customer experience. They’d seen a gap in the market that coincided with their skills, and they’d built their business around that.
But they knew that wasn’t enough. Their ideal customers – style-conscious renters, design lovers on a budget, people who wanted their home to feel like them – needed more to go on than shipping speed and price point. They wanted me to create a story around the brand.
Our goal was to create a message that could do three things:
Reflect the values behind the business (without making them up)
Speak directly to the customer’s real-life challenges and aspirations
Provide a practical foundation for content, design and future campaigns
The Process: Listening first, then writing
Usually when I’m building a brand story, I start with the founder/s. That’s where I listen to how they built the brand, tap into the emotion and story behind that. But, with Pulse of Home this wasn’t going to work. The emotion – the story – needed to come from somewhere else: their audience. So I went digging.
Over five weeks, I worked through a combination of:
Discovery calls with the founders
Forum and review mining for voice of customer data
Interviews with five home and lifestyle influencers whose audiences matched their target market
From this, I developed a full brand messaging guide, including:
Brand mission, values and positioning
A clear brand voice (optimistic, warm, and encouraging without being overly casual)
Two customer avatars drawn from real behaviours and motivations
Key messages mapped to different points in the sales cycle
Practical copy guidance for social, product pages and customer comms.
The Outcome: A message the team could actually use
By the end of the project, Pulse of Home had a clear brand message they could hand off to their web designer, social media manager and future collaborators – confident that everyone would be working from the same core narrative.
The messaging now runs through their new homepage, product descriptions and social posts. And because it was built around the reality of their customers’ lives, it has made content creation easier, more focused, and more effective.
They’ve seen a steady increase in visibility and sales since applying the messaging – but just as importantly, the brand now feels like something their team can grow with.
They have stories they can tell, pictures they can paint, and emotions they can be sure will resonate with their audience.
So what?
If you’re a founder who’s used to thinking in numbers, customer service tickets and logistics dashboards, it’s not always easy to talk about brand.
This project shows what’s possible when you pair strategic clarity with human insight. You can create messaging that feels like a natural extension of the business itself, while tapping into the exact emotions your audience are feeling. Meaning they actually want to buy from you!
Comments Off on Website copy that works: Converting technical expertise into client connection for Dark Knight IT
by allwordsbypeta
“I connect in a very black and white, almost manual textbook sort of way that was uninspiring.”
That’s what Daryn Hesketh, CEO of Dark Knight IT, told me in our first call. His company excels at protecting businesses from cyber threats, but their website wasn’t capturing the personality and expertise that makes them exceptional partners for their non-technical clients.
The TLDR
Dark Knight IT needed to transform their deep cybersecurity expertise into website copy that built trust and connected with clients. Through strategic messaging and personality-driven copy, we created a website that balances authority with accessibility, helping them appeal to both SMEs and enterprise clients who need top-tier cyber protection.
Dark Knight IT (yes, that is the best IT business name ever!) is a cybersecurity firm protecting businesses from all those scary things happening in the online world (like that terrifying podcast ad I heard the other day that said your Bluetooth coffee machine was spying on you – ugh!). They’re exceptional at keeping their clients safe, but like many technical experts, they struggled to translate their knowledge into language that would resonate with potential customers.
The Challenge
Ever tried reading a technical manual when you just want to know if a product is right for you? That’s what Dark Knight IT’s website felt like. Daryn was open that he’d used ChatGPT to write it – cue long complicated sentences, and yawn-inducing paragraphs that were hurting their conversion rate.
They faced challenges that are common to many technical businesses:
Converting complex knowledge into accessible, engaging content (without dumbing things down)
Moving away from documentation-style writing that failed to inspire confidence
Building trust in a field where technical authority must balance with approachability
Creating consistent messaging that works for both small businesses and enterprises
Developing a voice that maintains expertise while showing a little of the team’s awesome personality
The Solution
Deep-Dive Discovery
I started by diving deep into what makes Dark Knight IT different. Beyond the technical specifications and service features, what really matters to their clients? What keeps business owners up at night when it comes to cybersecurity?
This research revealed something crucial: while clients absolutely want technical expertise, they also need to trust the humans behind the technology. They want to know they’re working with experts who understand their business, not just their tech stack. And they want to be talked to like humans, not robots.
Voice Development
This is a scary industry, often based on instilling even more fear in customers so they’ll buy your services. The Dark Knight team aren’t about fear, they genuinely care about their clients and want them to feel safe. So, instead of the typical cybersecurity approach, we developed a voice that balances authority with accessibility. Think of it as having a conversation with a highly knowledgeable friend who knows how to explain complex concepts without making you feel out of your depth. And who cares about you.
This meant:
Translating technical features into real-world benefits
Using storytelling to explain complex concepts
Letting Dark Knight’s personality shine through with a little tongue-in-cheek humour!
Website Copy Strategy
The website copy we created guides visitors through a clear narrative, explaining technical concepts through their real-world impact. Each page builds trust while maintaining expertise, showing potential clients they’re in capable hands without overwhelming them with technical details.
The Impact
The new messaging framework and website copy transformed how Dark Knight IT connects with potential clients. Now they have a website that:
Genuinely connects with visitors
Builds trust through clear, accessible expertise
Creates consistent messaging across all channels
Appeals effectively to both SME and enterprise markets
Daryn has also been using sections of the copy when he networks and pitches to potential clients.
The Client’s Verdict
“Honestly, my perspective has totally changed. I wouldn’t start a new website or marketing strategy without consulting Peta first. She solved our articulation problems by creating text that was emotional and gave personality to me and the team.”
– Daryn Hesketh, CEO of Dark Knight IT
So What?
In the cybersecurity world, everyone’s selling expertise. But expertise alone isn’t enough – you need to show the humans behind the tech, the personality behind the protection. And you need to be able to explain important concepts to those who aren’t tech natives – without being patronising.
That’s what strategic messaging and website copy do for you:
Translate your technical knowledge into language that resonates with clients
Show what makes your approach unique in a crowded market
Create emotional connections while maintaining authority
Build trust through personality and expertise
Are you in a technical field? Do you struggle to transform your expertise or complex product into content that connects with actual humans? Let’s talk about how strategic messaging can help.
Jevon Baby, a startup launching a medical-grade, wearable breast pump, needed to stand out in a competitive market where trust is everything. Through strategic brand messaging and empathy-driven website copy, they launched with a clear voice that resonates with their ideal customers, so they could carve out market share.
The Client
Jevon Baby is a Singapore-based startup revolutionising the global breast pump market with their medical-grade, wearable (and super-silent) pump. They want parents to feel empowered and supported, and to offer them solutions that mean they can live their lives AND give their babies the best.
The Challenge
Jevon Baby faced challenges common to a lot of eCommerce startups:
Standing out in a saturated market where most competitors focused on technical features
Building immediate trust in a space where consumers want a LOT of reassurance (and will often go on recommendations)
Giving browsers enough information to make their decision, without overwhelming them with technical language
Putting genuine customer connection at the heart of their brand, rather than hard-sell and discounts
Creating content that would feel consistent across all customer touchpoints
The Solution
I worked with the JevonBaby team to develop a brand messaging strategy that met those challenges, and helped them connect with their ideal avatar from day one. The Guide I produced also gave them a framework for consistent communication across all channels as they launched and beyond. (And then I worked with their web development team to create website copy based on this strategy).
Deep research into customer pain points and potential objections to purchase
I spent time gathering information on what was really annoying and frustrating mums about the current breast pump solutions. And I landed on this image of a mother missing out on life as she sat attached to a hospital-grade, mains-powered pump that was plugged into the wall or hiding in the bathroom in between meetings because the wearable pump was too loud and conspicuous.
This turned into (among other things) the tagline – “Life, without limitations”, positioning the JevonBaby pump as the answer to a real felt pain.
Story-driven messaging that emphasises emotional benefits over technical features
When you’re a challenger brand, you can’t rely on pages of 5-star Google Reviews or an army of UGC creators shouting about your product. So you have to do something different. In the case of JevonBaby, the difference was moving away from technical features and “innovative solutions”, and making their audience feel heard and understood.
A lot of breast pump brands go all in on the authority vibe – they use technical medical language and a “you can trust us because we’re smart and more qualified that you” vibe. It’s a parental, professional brand voice that works well for them. But I wanted to do something different with JevonBaby. I wanted a modern vibe, and a friend at the bar brand voice, appealing to those parents who didn’t want to change their personalities just because they’d become parents. They wanted to be adventurous, to work, to go out to dinner, to travel. And they didn’t want to be held back by their breast pump.
They’d look at JevonBaby and feel empowered. An emotional pull, rather than trying to overwhelm people with a list of technical features.
The Brand Messaging Guide and website copy we worked on meant Jevon Baby could:
Launch with a clear, distinctive voice in their market
Build trust by actually speaking to their audience’s worries and needs
Connect emotionally with their target audience
Make sure their content was saying the same thing across all channels
Set a strong foundation for sustainable growth – even into other product lines
The founder’s verdict:
“Peta really over-delivered! If you are looking for a professional brand strategist, please look for Peta.”
Clement JevonBaby founder
So What?
The chances are, someone else is selling the same thing as you are. And they probably have a bigger ad budget.
So, to build your business, you need more than a great product. You need to be able to show people why they should buy it from you. Why are you better? Why is your version of the product better for them? Why should they trust you?
That’s what one of my Brand Messaging Guides does for you:
Gives you the information you need on your audience – what they’re looking for, and the language they’re using to talk about it – so that you can use that language throughout your brand communications and make them feel heard.
Helps you figure out what’s really unique and interesting about your brand, your product, and your story – so that you can really stand out n your marketplace
Gives you empathy-based, story-driven messaging that you can put EVERYWHERE – so that you can create those emotional connections that drive customer loyalty.
Makes sure that your team has clear guidelines for creating all your content – so that you can build trust through consistency.
Are you ready to build a foundation for scalable, sustainable growth? Let’s talk about how clear brand messaging can transform your eCommerce business.
Comments Off on How my Brand Voice Guide freed a founder from content micromanagement and saved him 10 Hours a Week
by allwordsbypeta
The TDLR
Evolution Engineers, a rapidly growing digital marketing agency, was struggling with consistent brand messaging across their expanding team. Founder James Lee found himself trapped in a constant feedback loop, correcting content instead of focusing on strategic growth. I developed a hybrid Brand Messaging and Tone of Voice Guide for the team, resulting in clearer communication, increased team alignment, and a stronger brand identity – freeing James up to focus on high-value tasks.
The Client
Evolution Engineers is a digital marketing agency founded in 2019 by James Lee. They offer consulting services, lead generation, and traditional digital marketing, catering to marketing directors and heads of marketing in various industries.
The Challenge
As the Evolution Engineers grew, they faced:
Inconsistent brand voice across team members
Lack of clear, objective resources for new hires
Difficulty articulating their unique value proposition without falling into industry clichés
Most frustratingly, James found himself caught in a time-consuming feedback loop. He explained, “Whenever new people join, there’s this learning cycle where they’ll get feedback from me saying, ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound like us.’ In my mind, I think I know what Evolution Engineers sounds like, and sometimes we execute it quite well… but we’re definitely not consistent with it.”
This constant need for correction was eating into James’s time, preventing him from focusing on strategic growth and high-value tasks.
The Solution
I crafted a hybrid Brand Messaging and Tone of Voice Guide, tailored to Evolution Engineers’ unique needs. My approach included:
Brand discovery questionnaire and interview
Analysing materials that best represented EE’s desired voice
Market, audience, and competitor research
Interviews with EE’s clients to gather vital Voice of Customer info
60-minute voice exploration workshop with the team
Development of key messages
Creation of a Brand Voice Guide, including tone analysis, brand voice pillars, and channel-specific guidelines
I focused on creating an easy-to-use resource full of examples so team members could quickly see how EE speaks in various formats.
The Impact
So, what difference did it actually make?
Clearer articulation of Evolution Engineers’ UVP
Consistent brand voice across all content and channels
Easier onboarding process for new hires
Improved ability to stand out in a saturated market
Significant reduction in time spent on content corrections (estimated at 10 hours per week saved)
James was particularly relieved to have an objective resource for the team to reference. Freeing him from having to personally go through every piece of content that EE puts out.
He said, “Now when I say ‘that’s what Evolution Engineers sounds like,’ that’s what I mean. It’s not just in my head anymore.”
“Peta did a really good job of listening and hearing. She truly heard us, not just listened to us. We came out of the process feeling understood. Now, I can focus on growing the business instead of constantly correcting content.”
So what?
Is your growing team struggling to maintain a consistent brand voice? Imagine onboarding new hires who instantly ‘get’ your brand’s tone.
Are you spending more time editing social posts, white papers, or articles than you would writing them yourself?
What if you could have your own actionable guide that made it easy for every team member to sound like your brand – minimal edit rounds required?
Book a free strategy call now and let’s talk about how a Brand Voice Guide could save you time and frustration!
