I’m joined by Jeremy Miller, marketing strategist, branding expert, speaker and best-selling author of two great books Sticky Branding and Brand New Name. 

Jeremy isn’t a typical strategist and fell into branding as a necessity after watching his family business nearly hit rock bottom. He realized that they weren’t failing because of their salespeople or marketing processes but because of their brand. 

He embarked on a decade-long study of how companies grow recognizable and memorable brands profiling and interviewing hundreds of companies across dozens of industries. 

Jeremy only speaks about branding and marketing ideas that have been tested and applied in the real world, throwing out any ideas that failed to move the needle. 

I really enjoyed my chat with Jeremy… 

Apart from the fact that he’s an authoritative speaker who knows his sh*t… 

We dug into his unique perspective and processes including 

His brand strategy client coaching philosophy 

The 3M’s messaging strategy  

And his reverse, sales, marketing, brand approach 

So if you want to learn from a top strategist and author, who made his way by following what worked and throwing out the rest… 

Then stick around for this

6 Ways To Sticky Branding, Marketing & Sales (W/ Jeremy Miller)

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Jeremy Miller Journey

Stephen Houraghan

For those who don’t know who you are or who haven’t picked up your books, which I definitely recommend.

Can you give us a bit of a background as to how you arrived at where you are today and what you’re up to at the moment?

Jeremy Miller

Sticky Branding is a strategy consulting or growth strategy consulting firm based out of Toronto, Canada. 

We work with companies around the world on how do you grow your business and brand at the next level, and where Sticky Branding was born was actually out of a family business. 

I don’t have a traditional path into branding and marketing. I actually fell into it out of necessity.

I joined my family’s business when I was in my 20’s or around 2004 and that first year on the job was just a nightmare, and I thought I was gonna take over the world and show my parents a thing or two, and it turns into my ass handed to me.

I remember sitting down with my parents at the end of that first year and saying,

This is what it’s like to be in a family business and this what it’s like to be doing this kind of sales and marketing, then I can’t do it.

I’m gonna go back to the software industry. Life was easier there. 

I got the advice for my career at that moment. My dad said to me 

It’s not about the business you’ve built, it’s about the business we’re building.

What are we gonna build next?

That gave me permission to look at our customers, look at our market, look at the business and I discovered I didn’t have a sales problem. 

Like I originally thought I had a branding problem where our business looked like everybody else aand we see chatGPT coming online right now. 

Well, at that moment Google was what was transforming our business. The way people found companies in the early two thousand was shifting, and our business got hit early.

Fast forward a little bit, I sold the family business in 2013 and I asked myself, what’s the book I wish I had when I went through that experience? 

I wanted to tell the story of how do mid-size privately held businesses, companies like yours in mind, that challenge giants of our industry.

Just wanna do a great job and have great brands and great customers.

How do we do this?

And what that ultimately led to was creating Sticky Branding.

Sticky Branding with 12 and a half principles, not only of my company story but pulling around 250 stories from around the world of successful mid-market companies and the lessons they’ve learned.

Importance Of Brand Strategy

Stephen Houraghan

I really like that story and especially since you’ve come from a completely different industry with no traditional education background.

I think a lot of people can relate to that because so many people have shifted their careers at some stage and I’m certainly someone who did that. 

I was in the finance industry and that was my traditional background and I kind of fell into the industry as well. 

I really like the fact that what you built sticky branding from, first of all the principles, then the consultancy was the lessons that you learned along the way not because somebody taught you in a book or a lecture hall. It was through your own trial and error that brought that about and you I really love that. 

How did you stumble upon the importance of brand strategy? 

Obviously, in looking at your business, you had to ask some serious questions, right?

Jeremy Miller

My career trajectory, like all careers is quickly and I started out in sales which my family that what we’re passionate about is sales. 

So when the, the Super Bowl happens, or Thanksgiving or Christmas, when you talk about football and sports, my family talked about sales.So that’s what I’ve grown up on and know that’s, that’s my comfort zone.

I started out in sales then I joined Leap Job, my family’s business, and that was a sales and marketing recruiting agency. 

I went from CRM to HR to say, 

How do I affect sales performance?