What happens when you can’t explain why you’re different?

Peek inside Susan’s Brand Messaging Guide

The Background

Susan Sutherland had built a successful executive coaching practice after nearly three decades in corporate leadership.
She’d climbed every rung of the ladder, ending her corporate career as a senior vice president, and was now coaching executives who were at the same crossroads she’d once faced.

But when she sat down to write about her work – on her website, in proposals, or even in conversation – something didn’t feel right.

“My brand is in a shift mode,” she told me.
“I know who I work with and what I stand for, but my message hasn’t caught up.”

Like many experienced coaches, Susan could explain what she did: deep, transformational work with high-level leaders. But she struggled to describe why someone should choose her.
She relied mostly on referrals, which meant she’d never needed language that could travel beyond a conversation.
As she prepared to grow her visibility on LinkedIn and launch a new website, that gap started to feel impossible to ignore.

“I can describe what I do,” she said, “but not why someone should choose me. I’m not bold or explicit enough.”

The Work

We built Susan’s Brand Messaging Guide to bring structure and clarity to what she already knew intuitively. And to give her a clear, differentiated message that she could apply across every part of her business.

The guide starts from the outside and moves inward:
We mapped her audience, studied her competitors, uncovered the truth of her brand voice, and distilled it all into messages she could actually use.

Step 1: The Audience

We started by defining the two clients who appear most often in her work:

Alex, the Established Executive: late 40s to early 60s, accomplished but quietly wondering, is this all there is?
Jordan, the Restless Leader: mid-40s to mid-50s, on the edge of a big shift but unsure what comes next.

Demographics are part of the story, sure. But a small part. Based on client interviews and research, we uncovered stories that captured the tension Susan sees every day: success without fulfilment.
And the language they used in interviews gave us the emotional vocabulary that would later shape her website and content. Seriously – we took exact phrases from these pages and used them on the website to make sure visitors knew they were in the right place.

Step 2: The Competitors

Next, we looked at the landscape of executive coaching, therapy, and wellness.
Susan noticed something: everyone seemed to focus on performance or healing – rarely both.

That insight became the heart of her differentiation:
coaching the whole human inside the executive role.

“My approach is more effective because it provides a thought partner who understands the corporate environment…”

How we uncovered her brand voice and archetype

When I build a messaging guide, I’m not guessing at tone or picking adjectives that sound nice.
I study how a founder speaks, how their clients describe them, and what sits underneath the work they do. Then I map that personality into something strategic – a voice and an archetype that anyone on their team (or any future writer) can use to keep the message consistent.

For Susan, this part of the process was where everything clicked.
She’d been torn between sounding “corporate enough” for the executives she serves and “authentic enough” for herself. Once we named her voice type and archetype, that tension disappeared.
She could sound exactly like herself (calm, thoughtful, and wise) without worrying if she was getting it “right.”

How I Define Your Brand Voice

I don’t pull your brand voice out of thin air. I map it using Justin Blackman’s voice framework.
(Justin is the King of Brand Voice, and I trained with him to analyse cadence, rhythm, tone, and vocabulary so your voice can be documented and replicated.)

There are 9 Voice Types I draw from, each defined by how they sound and feel on the page.
Every client sits somewhere on this spectrum, often a blend of two.

For Susan, we combined The Yogi (calm, contemplative cadence) with elements of The Translator (clarity and precision).
That pairing gave her the depth and flow she needed without losing approachability – a tone that feels as safe and grounded as her coaching style.

The Psychology Behind Your Brand Personality

Once we’ve defined how you sound, we look at who you are.
I use the 12 Jungian brand archetypes to ground your messaging in psychology – the shared stories and motivations that shape how audiences perceive you.

Each archetype represents a distinct personality pattern, value system, and way of creating trust.
You don’t need to fit neatly into one. Most brands draw from two or three that sit comfortably together.

For Susan, we identified The Sage as her dominant archetype (the truth-seeker and mentor), which naturally aligned with her audience of experienced executives searching for meaning.
That archetype guided everything from her word choice to her pacing: she leads with insight, not authority.

Once Susan’s voice and archetype were clear, the rest of her messaging started to fall into place.

Step 3: My Brand

Inside the brand section, we anchored her identity using the Sage/Yogi combination.
This pairing became her compass for all future writing. She could use the example phrases verbatim as email or social prompts, and create her own from the guidance.

We also created an elevator pitch, a USP statement, a social bio, and a brand story – all easy to copy and paste all over her marketing.

“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.”

Step 4: My Messaging

With the voice and audience in place, the messaging almost wrote itself.
Her key statements became the through-line for her website and social content:

“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.”

Those lines now appear across her homepage, sales pages, email campaigns, and LinkedIn content, creating instant recognition. Her audience gets used to these being her themes, and they’re clear on exactly what they’ll get when they work with Susan.

Step 5: SEO and Content

Finally, we mapped search phrases and blog ideas that extend her message beyond referrals.
Susan isn’t interested in a keyword-stuffing strategy. The aim of this section of the Guide was to give her content a direction that felt strategic, rather than reactive.

She’s now got a bunch of ideas to get her started, as she builds a library of content that’s worthy of a thought leader.

Beyond KPIs: How holistic leadership drives both personal and professional success
It’s Lonely at the Top: Navigating the challenges of C-Suite leadership

The Result

Before her Brand Messaging Guide, Susan could explain what she did, but not why someone should choose her. Her message felt scattered, her tone uncertain.

After working through the process, she had complete clarity on her positioning and a framework to communicate it across every part of her business.

“It finally gave me the language I’d been reaching for,” she said.

She’s used the guide to:

Give her the momentum to finish her website
Create new email sequences and content themes
Keep her tone consistent across LinkedIn and client proposals
Get better results from ChatGPT as it’s now trained on her voice and messaging

The practical ROI

Clear, differentiated positioning in a crowded coaching market
Website and sales copy completed after too long stuck in Blank Page mode
Consistent messaging across platforms and offers
Reduction in time spent writing content and proposals
Lines, phrases, and whole paragraphs she can copy and paste across her marketing

The emotional ROI

Confidence in how she communicates her value
Relief that everything finally sounds aligned
Pride in a message that feels grounded, distinctive, and wholly hers

What does this mean for you?

If you’re a coach, consultant, or solo service provider who’s built a business you’re proud of but your words still sound like they belong to an earlier version of you, or you struggle to explain how you’re different from everyone else who’s popped up in the Google search, this is the work that brings everything into focus.

Your Brand Messaging Guide becomes the foundation for everything: your website, your emails, your offers, your voice.
It’s what helps you articulate your difference clearly, and sound like the business you’ve actually built.