The Art of Positioning

Most businesses don't fall apart from bad decisions. They fall apart from good ones made too soon. A second brand. A new offer. Another location. It all looks like momentum until the original thing starts cracking with confused customers, divided staff, and a message that doesn't know what it's saying anymore. John Hanrahan, franchise strategist and the man who's 4x'd EBITDA on...

Your website gives off a feeling. Your brand has a story. But are they actually saying the same thing? In this Art of Positioning episode, we go at it from three angles: visuals, words, and strategy, with UX designer Rachel Lee and verbal identity specialist Emily McGregor. Real client stories, real gaps they've seen, and the tests you can run right now to find out if your brand is actually di...

Laid off in the middle of the 2008 crash with a day’s notice and no savings cushion, Dave Marciniak did the one thing he could not afford to do: he started again. That decision led him into landscaping, where he built a reputation for unusual work, the kind of projects that don’t just fill a garden, they change what people think is possible. But after 20 years, he hit the part of business no one l...

Wendy Murphy, CEO of second‑generation Timber Tech Truss (started by her parents in 1980), shares what growth really looks like when you go from family-run to private equity-backed, and then acquire two businesses in 18 months. She shares why Timber Tech sold to align on a new direction, how the bolt‑on strategy led to buying a stair company and a prefab wall/framing company, and why “alignment” b...

Taylor Wilson ran a traditional agency. Hourly rates. Custom proposals. It wasn't scalable. She could only sell so much of herself. Leadership buy-in took forever. Budgets got cut. The model was breaking. So she repositioned Creative Shizzle to work like Netflix. Monthly subscription. Get what you need. No massive proposals. No six-figure commitments required. The transition wasn't smooth....

Chick-fil-A had a 3M-follower TikTok goldmine. They told her to stop posting. Merriam Webb was showing staff meals, building massive organic reach. Corporate shut it down. She left and got a Shake Shack deal instead. That's what happens when you don't understand the difference between employee advocacy and forcing your team to sound like corporate robots. Internal comms leader Cassandra Ba...

At $1.2M, everything stopped working. Landscape company Downer Brothers could add more crews, more equipment, and watch revenue grow. Until they couldn't. Profit tanked. Hours piled up. Same money. Nicole Downer had to reposition her entire business to break through to $10M. Generalists became specialists. Gut-feel decisions became data-driven. And the hardest part? Helping longtime team membe...

Your brand needs to evolve. But what if you lose the customers who got you here? Customer experience leader Melissa Eaton and five-time CMO Amy Heidersbach have both guided businesses through repositioning without alienating loyal customers. Amy led marketing at PayPal and Visa, scaling a business unit to $1.2 billion. Melissa solves complex business problems by seeing patterns others miss. Most c...

When your team tells different stories about your business, customers notice. PR strategist Gloria Chou had a team of seven plus a CMO who couldn't grow her account because everyone was following marketing templates instead of sharing what the business actually stood for. After letting go of the CMO and taking back control, Gloria discovered the difference between values-based messaging and te...

Most business owners think they'll just clean things up when they're ready to sell. Well, as great as that would be, it doesn’t work that way. In this episode of The Art of Positioning, M&A attorney Alexandria Seydel and financial advisor Allie Beckmann join Beatrice to break down why 75% of businesses that go to market never actually sell. And it's not market conditions, it's deal killers hid...

Marketing. It’s not about you. Nope, no buts. It’s not. As co-host of Blame it on Marketing Emma Davies says: “Marketing's not about vibes. Marketing is art and science. So if they're not asking for data and they're just talking.” Between multi-business founders and hosts Emma Davies and Ruta Sudamantantaite, and Beatrice - this episode gets spicy and brutally honest on what effective...

Your brand is one viral moment away from disaster. Crisis management expert Oliver Aust and legal expert Gordon Firemark know this. They've watched brands crumble overnight, and others emerge stronger. In this episode: → Crisis playbook that works (not theory)→ Training your team on it→ Legal safeguards before storms hit→ PR recovery when damage control fails→ Trust rebuilding that converts sk...

Company cultures are broken. And ping-pong tables are NOT the answer. But what is? And how much does your brand strategy play a part? Juan Carlos Morales, a recruiting expert, Desiree Goldey, a DIB specialist, and Beatrice come together to a) answer these questions and b) fix the employee experience. Think: Fixing employer branding, reflecting values in hiring and the employee experience, and how...

There’s fluff content, then there is practical business troubleshooting. This episode is all about the latter. The Art of Positioning, host Beatrice Gutknecht, and this week’s operations-focused guests, Brandon Gano, COO at Human Ops Technologies, and Emma Cowling, a seasoned business coach with one goal: Challenging the commonly seen ‘fluff’ that is brand values and going into the day-to-day oper...

Is it time to rethink your AI approach to your brand voice? Host, Beatrice Gutknecht, is joined by expert guests Leland Best and Chris Troka for an episode that looks at integrating AI and automation with your brand's message and voice, without sounding like another bot or worse, pretty words that don’t create actions. This episode is about making your AI tools work for you (like strategies fo...

We killed The Art of Branding. It’s dead. Buried. RIP to a mostly decent name. Is this a resurrection? A new position? Or did we just do a Jaguar and say duck you to everything that’s been built so far? In this first episode of season 3, joined by podcast producer and manager Elijah Drown, Beatrice shares why the change, the evolution of the business, and rebranding. This one is for business owner...

What if you could take your seemingly 'boring' business and shake up how it's seen, inside-out to go from plateau to pop star? Beatrice Gutknecht (Brand Positioning Badass) is on a mission to help you do that while avoiding dropping big bucks on harmful rebrands. The Art of Positioning podcast teaches you how to rewire operations around new positioning. The goal? Ready to implement tip...

In celebration of a full circle, The Art of Branding podcast producer Elijah takes the reins for this episode posing question to host, Beatrice Gutknecht for a behind the scenes take on brand strategy, the evolution of the Badassery by B brand, challenges, common myths and the implementation of brand strategy. From tackling common misconceptions to showcasing her holistic approach to sharing the c...

A podcast community platform disguised as a dating app?! This episode is badass take on branding, podcasting, and going against the grain. And who better to tackle this than the founder of Matchmaker FM, Podcast.co , CuePodcasts.com and Radio.co - James Mulvany. In this episode, James recounts his journey from a geeky DJ and web programmer to a badass entrepreneur shaking up the audio space. They...

Join Beatrice with this week's guest, Chris Harris, co-founder of Impossible Machine, for an badass episode on redefining agencies. From the pressures of profitability over revenue to navigating economic instability and recession fears, this discussion gets real about surviving and thriving in today’s business landscape. They delve into the spirit of innovation, legacy institutions resisting chang...

In this episode of The Art of Branding Podcast, host Beatrice shakes things up with a candid conversation about authentic differentiators in business. Joining her is Cameron Varner, the principal from Banbury Lane Design the architectural and cabinet hardware consultants. They discuss the challenges and triumphs of refreshing a brand strategy after 38 years, balancing maintaining traditional roots...

What if strategy could instead be clear, simple, bold, and even actually useful? This week’s guest Alex M H Smith, the author of 'No Bullshit Strategy' and founder of Basic Arts is all about shaking things up in this way. Alex shares insights on authenticity versus inauthenticity - with surprising results and using brands like Nickelback and Starbucks as examples. Discover the balance between appe...

In this episode of The Art of Branding Podcast, B2B marketing scaler James Mentor, who’s 4Xed 3 SaaS companies, helped 2 exits, and built a 6-figure marketing agency bootstrapped, joins Beatrice to chat deleting boring in B2B. James shares his experience transforming SaaS companies through fresh marketing strategies and scaling them using AI. The discussion covers overcoming resistance to new meth...

How can you take an industry that’s been doing the same things in the same way for decades and shake it up? That’s what this episode is about with Dave Gulas, an entrepreneur on a mission to bring the human element to the forefront in the logistics industry through personal branding. The podcast host of Beyond Fulfillment and the President and Co-founder of EZDC 3PL, Dave and Beatrice, discuss tra...

The hospitality industry is one of the oldest and most steadfast industries (in holding on to doing things the same way); between that and the travel tech industry, this episode with marketing strategy powerhouse Jacki Brown aims to shake things up. With nearly 20 years of experience in consumer goods and hospitality tech for brands like Amadeus and Shark Vacuums, Jacki brings some serious oomph t...