In this episode from the archives, Chandresh Pala discusses different business models and how to consider which one is right for you. The episode touches on:

• Choosing the right name
• How to create products and sell them
• What is a business model canvas?
•  Insights on different business models
• What are the first stages of a business —  exploration and learning
• A brand is more than a logo — it's your interaction, the team's interaction with the client, and how the customer uses and experiences the products.
• Why do people choose brands based on values, identity and  purpose?
• What should be the mindset of someone launching a new business or product?

LinkedIn: Chandresh Pala

www.coheziadigital.com 

Valuable Resources:

Brand Tuned Scorecard
Brand Tuned Accelerator
www.brandtuned.com 

Chandresh Pala: But the name is that first interface. But then after that it's more about brand experience. I think that's really the most important thing.

Shireen Smith: Hello, and welcome to the brand tune podcast, which discusses all things brand related, including the essential trademark and IP dimension. I'm your host, Shireen Smith, IP lawyer, Brand Manager, and author of Brand Tuned: The new rules of branding, strategy and intellectual property.

Shireen Smith: Before the episode I wanted to mention the brand tuned accreditation program, it teaches you how to develop a brand strategy that incorporates intellectual property. IP is not just a legal subject, but a lawyer can advise on after you've already developed a brand. It goes beyond availability, searching and registration of trademarks. Because the very choices you make during branding, such as of names or other brand identifiers are IP decisions. Taking IP on board is the way to position a brand for value and success. Register your interest brandtuned.com to be notified when there is more news.

Shireen Smith: Pala is the founder of Cohezia Group, a venture studio, which specializes in creating innovative scalable ventures based on digital technologies, as Chandresh creates portfolios of company brands. In this episode, I wanted to quiz him about business. The focus of the episode is on the hue element of my tuned framework for creating a brand. Hue stands for understand the market. This is a large subject, obviously, because to have the right business strategy, you need to do research, decide how to position your product relative to competitors, to get really clear on your vision and target customers, or before you launch or adjust a business. So obviously, we couldn't discuss all that. But I started by discussing Chandresh shares his own business journey, and how he created his own brand. He explained what a brand means that it's more than just a logo. Also, that people sometimes choose brands because of what it says about them to be using those brands. And it was insightful hearing his thoughts. We then focus the discussion on business models, what the term means how people benefit from an understanding of the different components of a business model. Chandra made some interesting comments about the importance of distinguishing between exploration and learning. So, for example, when you're validating your assumptions, start by validating the problem quite separately from your proposed solution. One of the mistakes that Chandresh observes people making is to build products first. So, he had some suggestions about how to approach it in a better way. There's a lot of value here to help any prospective product creator. Think through their ideas. I'm sure you all enjoy it.

Shireen Smith: Chandresh, welcome to the Brand Tuned podcast tell us a bit more about your business.

Chandresh Pala: Hi Shireen. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you for inviting me. So, I am probably the best way to describe myself is a social entrepreneur, transformation mentor and impact investor. I currently am the founder of Cohezia Venture Studio. We are a venture studio which basically creates new startups. We also help them grow so we also help them to scale as well. So currently, we have a portfolio of ventures in the fin tech, event tech, augmented reality, virtual reality, and venture capital areas amongst other things.

Shireen Smith: Okay, that's interesting. When did you set this up?

Chandresh Pala: So, it's been a journey. Like most entrepreneurs, as you know, it's like a roller coaster of a ride. So, my background was I started many, many years ago, with a consultancy, working as a consultant in an IT consultancy, really working on sort of large-scale systems and consulting projects, doing sort of very large scale, client projects, I mean, everything from working on oil refinery management systems to building trading systems. So that was quite an experience, I think it's always a good thing to go through something like that, and work on a broad cross section of clients and, you know, challenges. And also, you know, learning about different methodologies and strategies, I then decided to really set up my own business, because I thought it was the right time, and I also saw an opportunity, things were really starting to take off in terms of the digital space. And, you know, there was an opportunity there to kind of combine the consulting, digital creative, and technology. So that's how I really started by setting up a, a new breed, I guess of company. That's where Cohezia originally started. And since then, you know, just to kind of cut a long story short, I have had a number of businesses along the way. Some of them technical, some of the non-technical. I've also had some creative businesses. I was the founder of a creative agency, a hybrid creative agency, combining art and architecture, and other things. And I've also helped a number of clients really scale and exit their businesses as well. So, I've kind of been through quite a number of the kind of business life cycles. So yeah, quite an interesting journey so far.

Shireen Smith: Okay, so have you had several businesses in one go, were they sort of one after another?

Chandresh Pala: I have, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend. I have had businesses in parallel. And actually, one of the reasons for creating the venture studio and the venture builder was because I realized that what I enjoy doing, was creating businesses. So, the best way to do that was to actually create a business that is in the business of creating new ventures. And the way that that's feasible is by creating each of those businesses as a separate entity, and as a separate brand. So, they all have their own independent brands, and they're separate entities and, and creating their own management teams, I think that's really the only way that it can be done. It's, you know, unless you're Elon Musk, or you know, somebody like that, it's quite a challenge to be running lots of companies in parallel.

Shireen Smith: Right? So, are they kind of like joint ventures where you help a business, somebody who's got a good idea?

Chandresh Pala: This bit of mix mixture of different models, some of them I founded, my staff, or I've co-founded, there's a couple of others, where I have my team have an equity stake, where we have come in as a strategic partner. There are others where I, again, am a strategic adviser. So, there's a bit of a spectrum, I think, some of them, I'm the actually the original founder. And again, that's been quite an interesting journey, you know, learning about the different advantages and disadvantages of doing all of those.

Shireen Smith: So how did you come up with the name is it Cohezia?

Chandresh Pala: It is that's right Cohezia is all about cohesion, because one of the things I kind of call myself is the fusion entrepreneur. Because I'm always looking for ways to combine things and you know, the interrelationship between all kinds of things which look as though they're separate. So, cohesion was the idea of bringing something together and cohesion, to create something of greater value by bringing lots of different components together.

Shireen Smith: Did you come up with that name straightaway or has it taken you a while to choose it?

Chandresh Pala: So, names are really difficult to choose, and actually finding .com or not necessarily finding you know, a good domain that reflects your name is quite a challenge, especially nowadays. It is difficult choosing names you know, but I think it’s worth spending some time on it. I wouldn't necessarily say that you should, you know be too worried about getting it exactly right. Because, you know one of the things that I really talk about when we're considering brands is that the name is that first interface, but then after that, it's more about brand experience, I think that's really the most important thing. So, the name gets you in front of somebody and gets their attention. But after that, it's really the brand experience.

Shireen Smith: So, did you have help coming up with that name or did you choose it yourself?

Chandresh Pala: I came up with it myself actually, I did run it past a number of people, I think that's a good thing to do. Because I think, you know, our perceptions are all framed in the context of our experience. So what means, you know one thing to me might mean, something completely different to somebody else in a different context. And I think a lot of brands have had a problem with that, because you know they create a brand based on their background but in a different industry you know that same word, we're in a different country, you know, that may mean something completely different. So, it is quite a tricky thing to do. And definitely worth you know, checking with different people from different backgrounds, even different nationalities to see whether it aligns. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that.

Shireen Smith: So, what help did you get to work out your brand and you know, can you tell me a bit more about, you know, what do you think a brand is? And how did you create your own brand?

Chandresh Pala: Well, I was quite fortunate, because I was at the time, I was also working with a brand guru, a chap called Robbie, a broker who was a great branding specialist and was running an agency and had tremendous experience, you know, building really big brands. And also, one of the original members of the team that I took on board had a lot of experience, his name is Siddharth Deshmukh. His background was branding and marketing. So, I was quite fortunate, in that the kinds of discussions we were having about brand were really deep, and really thinking about brands, not just from a creative perspective, but really about what a brand really means. And, you know, what's the sort of underlying definition of a brand and things like that? So, so those are really interesting discussions. And, you know, it's a fascinating topic.

Shireen Smith: So, you had pretty good experience, obviously with that, what were you hoping to achieve with your brand and can you explain something about your brand what is it?

Chandresh Pala: I think a brand is about really a promise, and it's about creating a perception, and it's about a residue that's left in a person's mind. Now, that is more than just the name, it's, it's really the sum of all the association then interactions that a person has, not just with the name, or the website, but you know, everything, the, the service, that they receive the product, you know, all of those. So, what we're trying to really do, and you know, I hope, you know, we've got gone some way towards achieving is really to achieve a perception about the company, which is more than just the name, but it's actually a perception of positive perception, and value perception. So, it's really trying to help people understand that, you know, a brand is more than just a nice logo, it's really your interaction and your team's interaction with the client. It's how the customer uses the products; you know what they feel about it. And it's the sum of all those interactions. And, and what we wanted to do, and hopefully, we were succeeding, is to really build a perception that, you know, we really care about your business, we want to create value for your business, you know, and build real service driven culture. And very often people kind of focus on, you know, building that within clients, but actually, it's probably equally if not more important to drill that into the team, you know, because if you have that perception and that sort of culture built into the team, then that was actually going to drive the experience turns out the customer receives as well.

Shireen Smith: Yeah, absolutely. So, what about intellectual property did you protect your name and logo?

Chandresh Pala: We've not done really done that to a great extent. Obviously, we've done some basic things. Technically, obviously there's some work involved, and maybe that's something we can talk about. potentially doing further downstream. But no, I mean, we, we got going, we made sure that obviously, there weren't any issues in terms of trademark. So, we just made sure everything was okay. And nobody else was using it. So, there weren't any issues in that sense. And we did some basic things in terms of making sure that, you know, we'd recorded it properly.

Shireen Smith: that's surprising that you haven't locked down your rights to it. But this is often something I notice in business because it's the very foundation of the brand. It's a bit like the land on which you are building properties. And if you don't own it, and somebody else registers it, it is so expensive to try and argue that you can first so it just absolutely, yeah. To me, it's just one of the costs of businesses to register your name, because that's how the brand is known.

Chandresh Pala: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, when I'm mentoring people, and when we're starting other companies, that's what we do. I think, as I said it's been a journey you know, and I've made a lot of mistakes on the way and that's probably one of them.

Shireen Smith: Okay, so you help somebody with an idea to work out what would be a good business model? Is that one of the things you do?

Chandresh Pala: Yeah, it's a mixture of things I mean we either create our own ventures, so we have a number of ventures, which we founded or co-founded, where we see that there's a problem and there's an opportunity, we will then create a really test that out to see, you know, on a simple small scale, whether that's a viable business, whether it's going to work, whether it's a problem worth solving. And then if it is, then you know, we would separate that out as a as an independent business. So, the way we work is, you know, each of those ventures is spun off as a separate entity as a separate business. So that's why we ended up with a portfolio of businesses. So that sort of business model is not to retain all of them under the same brand. And each of those ventures has their own brand as well, which gives a lot of flexibility. Because then those brands are very focused on the value proposition that they are working on. They have their own management teams, and, you know, resources as well. But they also share some infrastructure, and they, you know, share some common resources as well. So, they get the benefits of both worlds.

Shireen Smith: So, you're a bit like Procter and Gamble, except that they create product brands, but you're creating kind of separate business.

Chandresh Pala: Company brands yes, exactly.

Shireen Smith: But all within a certain space that you understand, is that right?

Chandresh Pala: Yes, almost all of them have been in some form tech enabled businesses. I won't say technology businesses because that means something different. But technology enabled businesses where there's some element of technology involved. And now to be honest, I mean, almost every single business has an element of technology that's involved. So that's quite a broad spectrum. But yeah, definitely, they tend to fall into businesses that have the ability to leverage exponential technologies.

Shireen Smith: So, do you get people coming to you and pitching to you to invest in them or.

Chandresh Pala: All the time, all the time. So, one of the companies I'm a co-founder of, is a company called EPIC - Exponential Positive Impact Capital, which is a platform for connecting impact driven ventures with impact investors. And it's slightly different from the normal investment platform in that it uses a new form of investment called revenue-based finance, which where we don't take equity, so it's non-dilutive. It so it's a slight it's a different new form of providing investment, and also were focused very much on impact investments. So, we're only in Investing in organizations that are creating positive impact. So that's quite an interesting new venture that I'm involved with.

Shireen Smith: So, when you created this agency, you said you also are involved in a creative agency? How did you How would you look at the business model for that.

Chandresh Pala: They are different and there are different business models, which we can touch on in a few minutes. But each company, there are standard structures for business model. So, there are almost sort of standard templates and formats for business models. At that time, which was some years ago, we had a standard agency model. So, we were providing our service as a service, you know, and paid service. We were building a community as well. And really helping people to collaborate helping artists and designers. So, we're very community focused as well. And bringing together artists, designers, creatives, digital, technologists, people in that space, producers, young producers, all kinds of people, not just traditional people, but we're also bringing together people like architects, lighting designers, so that whole idea of fusion and bringing people together, is what we were doing. And then, you know, bringing those people together to meet specific client requirements. So, we were bringing together specialists in a kind of a studio model, where we bring together various specialists to solve a particular problem. So that was really interesting times. I mean, one of the things we worked on, was on the James Bond movies. So, we had one of our artists was working on an installation, which ended up on one of the James Bond movies. So that was, that was interesting.

Shireen Smith: Yeah, interesting, so it's very necessary nowadays, to create a community for almost any business. Do you think? And how do you go about doing that?

Chandresh Pala: Absolutely. I'm always advising people on mentoring, and, you know, my companies to really build engagement. I think, you know, the future is about brands, which, you know, people will choose brands that are aligned with their values, their identity, and their purpose. So, when we talk about brands, actually, brands are things that people choose to really connect with their form of identity. So, whatever a person feels is their identity. If you look at the brands that they're choosing, there's actually a very good correlation, they're choosing those brands, because they're reinforcing that person's identity. Increasingly, what I've also seen is that people are choosing brands, because they align with that person's values. And that's becoming a lot more widespread now as well. People are really choosing brands because of the values and the purpose. So definitely, you know, connecting a brand with a community is absolutely critical. Letting your customers be the most effective promoters is the best form of marketing. Rather than going out doing it, you know, actually letting your customers be the promoters is one of the most effective ways of building a company.

Shireen Smith: So, could you talk me through how you decide on a business model for a business? You have a case study, maybe that you could.

Chandresh Pala: Let me maybe talk about what a business model is? So yeah, that sounds I think there's different people have different definitions. And maybe different people have different experiences. So, in simple terms, it's how an organization creates delivers and captures value. So, putting that even in simpler terms, it's basically how are you going to create products and sell them to make money? So, it's, it's a very, very simple concept, which, strangely enough, still, people don't really seem to understand, you know, they think, Oh, well, here's a product and that's it. But actually, it's about how you're going to create it, how you're going to deliver it and how you're going to, you know, create value, and make money from it. And there's a lot of misunderstanding in terms of people really, not understanding the different components of a business model. And there are various tools out there that people can use. There's something called the Business Model Canvas. Yeah, so that's one tool. But really, it's really about understanding what is the value proposition. So, in simple terms, you know people pay for you to solve a problem, or, you know, to create value. And the more people understand, you know, the concept of value, because people pay for value, you know, that's great value. And also, there's another concept that people get confused with. And that's leverage. Value is creating something that people want and are willing to pay for. And then scaling, that is what we mean by leverage, very often people mix those two up, and they start leveraging, because marketing is leverage. But if you haven't shown value, then doing all the marketing in the world isn't going to help you because you haven't proven value. So that's a common misconception, you know, prove value first, in the simplest way, prove that, you know, you can create a scalable, repeatable business model that where people are willing to pay for, you know, the value that you're creating, then show that it's repeatable, you know, make sure that it's something that isn't just, you know, your friends and family are buying because, you know, they like you and your mother's says, it's the best idea that she ever heard, because obviously, she's the mother. And then, you know, moving on to leveraging the different components of that other business model are the value proposition, understanding the customer segments, to understanding which customers, which segments they are. Thirdly, it's the revenue stream. So where is your revenue going to come from being really clear, and you know, how that connects with your value proposition, then your customer segments. And then your cost base. So, what are the core elements of your cost base to deliver that value. And then the route to market? How are you going to deliver the products and the services. What is the route to market or the channels. Those are really just the core of a business model, and if you understand even just those five points, then that's a huge step forwards, you know, and that's more than many people seem to do when they start.

Shireen Smith: Yeah, it's a vast field to just understand the customer segments. And then also, you know, how should you charge for something to do. Can you be a subscription model, presumably, that all these considerations go into deciding what the business model should be.

Chandresh Pala: They do and as you quite rightly, say I mean, there are different models. So subscription is one outright purchase as another, you know, this premium, you know, so you give something away, for free, and then you, you know, people can pay for the premium aspect of it, even free, you know, giving something away for free as a business model, I mean, Google, you know, as a multi trillion dollar company, you know, from giving free search, but the reality is that they, you know, either different, you know, they're making money from somewhere else, you know, they're making it from, you know, advertising and the data. There are things called multi-sided markets. So, these are platform-based business models, where you've got buyers and sellers. So, something like Amazon, you've got, you know, buyers and sellers. So, there are a set of standard models and structures. So, if people look at the sort of business model books, and Business Model Generation, where the business model canvas comes from, some of those are explained in there, but, you know, they all have the characteristics. So, understanding what business model you have is really important,

Shireen Smith: will offer nowadays people just have a set of skills, because, you know, they want to set up on their own, they might have to set up on their own because big corporations are not hiring so many people. So, they've got a set of skills, which they then need to use in a business, do you think there is going to be a difference for them as to how they implement their ideas? I mean, where should they go to for help, just to work out whether their idea is viable, whether people are going to buy from them, you know, just whether there's value, for example, in what they're going to sell?

Chandresh Pala: Of course, yeah, really, that whole first stage of a business is his exploration and learning. That's really the whole mindset that anyone that has starting a business or starting a new product needs to be in it’s, it's all about creating a, you know, a value proposition. Defining that but then going out and validating it, you know, it's going out and exploring, you know, understanding what those assumptions are defining them and then really going out and trying to validate those assumptions. And the best way of doing that is by, you know, going out and talking to potential customers. What I like to do, personally, what I tell people to do at a very early stages to do in two stages, one is to validate the problem, independent of the solution, and then go and validate the solution. So, let me just explain that, very often people go to potential clients and go well, here's a solution, you know, do you like it, you know, and that I think, should be the second stage, the first stage should be confirming the problem, even not even talking about a solution going and say, well, do you have this problem? Is it a problem that, you know, is worth solving, you know, is this a problem that you would pay money to solve, because it has to be something that is worth solving that they really see as an urgent problem and has value for them to solve first. And at that stage, you're not selling anything, you know, and it's quite refreshing. When you talk to clients like that, you get some incredible feedback, you know, you're just there to listen and learn. And then as a second stage, you know, you can go and show them something. And again, you know, one of the mistakes I'm sure you've seen as well is that people start building products, and then they go and take them, customers don't buy products, you know, they are buying a solution. So really showing how you're going to solve that solution can be done in really simple ways. And sometimes it's just a mockup, you know, to show this is how we're going to do it and getting customer feedback, potential customer feedback. It could just be by doing a PowerPoint, you know, doing some simple mockups, you know, anything, which is the simplest, fastest, cheapest way of validating the value proposition is what I'd recommend.

Shireen Smith: So, you'd create something and then go and speak to potential customers who might buy it, but just see if you can create enough interest.

Chandresh Pala: Absolutely, yeah. Because once they've confirmed that, they agree that you know, that problem is worth solving, and it's, you know, they would be willing to pay for it, then it's about showing them a solution, and whether they agree with that solution is going to solve that problem. And rather than create, you know, that whole application or whatever, you know, product, showing them, you know, that product, and what we call an MVP, you know, minimum viable product, which is a small, you know, fastest cheapest, simplest thing that you can do to validate your assumptions. And that might just be, you know, a click through PowerPoint presentation, there might be some mockups, it might be, you know, what we've done sometimes is to create almost mockup applications on the mobile phone, you know, using simple HTML, you know, some people get very creative, you can use 3d printing, to mockup physical products, all kinds of things. So, really creating something which allows you to validate your assumptions as early as possible will save people a lot of money.

Shireen Smith: But it's still quite difficult even if you know that there's a problem, and that some people are willing to pay for it, it's still quite challenging to actually find out how to position it, how to sell it, what to create.

Chandresh Pala: It is and being clear on the sort of the business model, and your customer segments is really important. So as part of your customer segmentation, I mean, and your strategy, one of the key things you need to understand is who are your primary customers? And a lot of people say, well, yeah, you know, we target everyone, and it's, you know, anyone can buy this, which, you know, in the long run might be true, but actually, there will be one or two core customer segments, which will account for 80% of the revenue. So, let me give you a way of thinking which might help people so as it's a great illustration that I saw, if you think about an if you want to create a 100 million annual revenue business, then there's different ways of achieving that, you know, there's not one route to do that. So, if your goal is to create 100 million pound revenue business, you need to decide which kinds of animals and this is kind of the analogies in terms of animals. You need to decide which kinds of animals you are going to be hunting. So, you can be hunting lots of very small animals like flies, or mice or rabbits, or slightly larger ones, medium ones, like deer, or maybe even larger ones like elephants, or the really big ones like whales. So, if you have an average customer revenue of, say 100 pounds per year, so that's the kind of mice level, you need 100 million paying customers, basically, I started, you'll need 1 million customers paying customers to make that 100 million. And to get that 1 million paying customers, you might need 10 to 20 million customers to try out your product. If you are targeting the larger accounts, say the kind of corporate level accounts which are the elephants, where the account value is 100,000 per year, then you only need 1000 enterprise customers. So, the strategy on how you reach them, and how you sell to them, and what kind of organization you need, is completely different, you know, to build, you know, 10 million paying customers, or 1 million paying customers and to build that kind of traction, it's a completely different marketing strategy to getting 1000 enterprise customers and managing, you know, 100,000-pound accounts.

Shireen Smith: So, it goes to knowing what where you want to go.

Chandresh Pala: Yeah, and who you're trying to target, you know, it's really understanding who you're trying to target. And actually, a lot of it's then logical because, you know, if you are targeting, you know, 100,000 customers, you need, you know, a good sales team, they're not going to buy that, you know, off a website, you know, you need to have certain things in place, you need to do things differently. Whereas if you're going for mass market, you know, then you probably want to be looking at influencers and online engagement and promotions and things like that. So very, very different strategies, both in terms of brand building and marketing.

Shireen Smith: I find that actually, businesses are often overwhelmed and knowing what to do when they read up about it. And they therefore think, okay, they need a logo, a website, and they turn to branding, hoping that they can get everything they need sorted. And actually, what they need is to sort out their business first, before turning to branding. Do you think so?

Chandresh Pala: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I'd agree. I mean, people think it's just about throwing money at marketing, but it's not, you know, it's, it's really understanding your value proposition being really clear. And also, one of the key things is differentiation, you know, what is the uniqueness? You know, why are you different from competition? How can you create, you know, ideally, you want a 10 times better solution? How can you create that massive, differentiated differentiation from your competition? And, and also, how can you create the barriers to entry, you know, so, I think there's a whole set of thinking that people should be doing to do that.

Shireen Smith: Well, that's where IP comes in, really, because it's about how you manage competition. So much copying happens, the minute somebody is successful, other businesses are going to pile in and start copying. And so, there's some things you can't protect and some that you can. And so, understanding, for example, what how much to reveal about your ideas, what to keep to yourself, all that needs a strategy as well, you know, before you turn to branding I think.

Chandresh Pala: Absolutely. I mean, that is a one of those differentiators if you have a product or some creative or something, you know, even a methodology, which is unique to yourself. So, in service orientated businesses, they're notoriously difficult to, to have IP but you know, what I have seen people do is create an even a service based methodology, which is unique to that company, and brand that Yeah, so we, you know, we created something for ourselves. And I know a lot of other consultancies and creative agencies do similar things where they will have their unique methodology and way of doing things and that has, you know, that's branded and you know, can be protected. So yeah, very important, you know, to have a unique way of delivering value. And that helps you stand out from the crowd and a great way of, you know, being able to have that barrier to entry and create what I call the X Factor, you know, to differentiate yourself from other things.

Shireen Smith: Very interesting. So, is there a brand that you particularly admire? Chandresh, before we finish?

Chandresh Pala: It's a tricky question, because there are different brands that I admire for different reasons. I think, you know, there are some brands which have great products, there are some which are great creatively, there are some that have achieved amazing things. So maybe, I'll mention a couple of examples and tell you what I like about them. Microsoft is actually a really interesting one, because Microsoft is a big company and big companies to change their brand is a bit like an oil tanker trying to change direction. And they had a specific type of perception, you know, client perception. And over the years, and especially with the new leadership, I think they're actually starting to turn that around. So, I am really watching them with a lot of interest, because some of the new things that they are coming up with are very creative. The way that they're working, is really interesting, you know, some of the investments they're making. And even just the way people are talking about them, is changing and the perception of them, you know, with their new products and services. So, I think that's an incredible challenge. If you're a big corporate to change, you know, people's perception of you is much, much harder than a small startup because you know, that's a lot easier. The other one, I guess, is an obvious one is probably more personal brand and his various company brands is Elon Musk. Yeah. And obviously his various brands and you know, maybe I should talk about the brand triangle, I don't know if you've command word, brand triangle. So, I don't know if you've covered this in previous podcast, but the way I approach it is that I tell people that there are three types of brand definitions that they can work on. One is a company brand. Oh, yes, yeah. The other is a personal brand, and the third is a product brand. And understanding the differences in what they're for is really important. So, for example, you know, Elon Musk is a personal brand. Tesla is a company brand, and the Roadster might be a product brand. So that's really interesting. A few other brands, I guess. I think Peloton has actually done incredibly well recently. So, they to create a premium brand is very difficult. And they seem to have managed to do that and are doing brand expansion.

Shireen Smith: What do they called?

Chandresh Pala: Peloton.

Shireen Smith: Peloton, oh, right? Yes, yes, they're doing pretty well.

Chandresh Pala: And they've built up incredible traction and perception, you know, they become the go to brand. I think that's when you recognize when a brand is doing well. It's where a brand occupies a position in somebody's brain. Yeah, you know, and takes up a space that you know, is hard to move. You know, it kind of occupies that space, it becomes the premium brand. I mean, peloton has become the premium brand for, you know, exercise equipment.

Shireen Smith: Yes, it's created its own category. A bit like Cirque du Soleil, without animals.

Chandresh Pala: And that, you know, that, again, comes from I don't familiar with Blue Ocean Strategy. Yes, yeah. So, there's a methodology that people can use to look at what other people are doing. And create, you know, different forms of value, value innovation, to differentiate themselves and almost get out of what's called a red ocean where everyone else is fighting it out and create a new category, which is really powerful way of positioning your brand.

Shireen Smith: Great. Thank you very much, Chandresh been really useful this episode.

Chandresh Pala: You're welcome. Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

Shireen Smith: Thank you for listening to this episode. Do stay in touch, sign up to the Brand Tuned newsletter or take the Brand Tuned quiz to find out if you're on track to be the go-to first choice brand for your ideal customers.