Blog Archives

Joan Nguyen is the Co-Founder and CEO of bumo, a brand that provides outstanding on-demand childcare for families and employers.

Bumo considers itself in the business of ‘parent care’ and today you can learn all about the TLC she and her Co-Founder put into crafting the bumo brand very hands-on, strategic, and filled with raw authenticity.

Trust is bumo’s brand DNA, but with an audience of new parents, you show trustworthiness very differently than you would with a financial organization for example.
Listen in as we talk all things branding, but we also dive into the psychology that drives purchasing decisions, data that could point you the wrong way, and how bumo ended up with ‘obsessive users’ despite the many pivots in the brand’s journey.

It was a fascinating conversation and I am excited to share it with all you brand-builders, may you be a founder or a marketer or a designer: This one is not be missed, despite the subpar audio on my end given a slew of technical difficulties. Yes, this can even happen to those who have recorded 100+ episodes. Joan labeled it ‘resilience’ and that is exactly how I see it.

Bennett Maxwell is the Founder and Chairman of Dirty Dough, one of the fastest-growing restaurant concepts in the US with 70 locations and another couple hundred in development.

In this episode, we get to hear how Bennett’s authentic reaction to a lawsuit that could have taken the business out instead created brand buzz, helped build his tribe, and added to the company’s growth.

We dive into the idea of instilling your personal mission into your company, how listening to a team member’s interactions with a customer changed the meaning of this brand’s name, and how color choices can directly affect business success.

That and so much more in this delightful conversation with Dirty Dough’s Founder, stuffed with gooey insights.

Alex Ostroy successfully combined his passion for cycling and art into a beloved brand that creates eclectic clothing for cyclists who crave self-expression in an industry known for the opposite.

Coming from a graphic design and Creative Direction background, Alex’s story and advice will resonate with a lot of you who struggle with blending art and business, who doubt yourself when going with your gut instincts rather than catering to the audience and market at all times and are afraid of combining passions to create a brand for themselves.

Kim Pham is a first-generation Vietnamese-American, the daughter of refugees, and, together with her sister Vanessa, the Co-Founder of Omsom, the loud and proud Asian food brand of noodles and sauces.

This episode already ranks very high on my top favorite HTM interviews ever. When founders start with a why and figure out the how and the what in the process, that’s when you know great brand stories are in the making. Don’t miss this episode.

This is episode 100 of Hitting The Mark and we worked for months to ensure we have the founder of an iconic brand for you. One most probably all of you know and many of you own a piece of the brand. To say we succeeded would be an understatement.

Travis Rosbach founded the world’s most used water bottle brand that took the nation, and the globe, by storm: Hydro Flask. From its iconic icon – pun intended – to its many colors and varied audience, let me take you on a ride from Travis’ background as a pilot, Scuba diver, and marine captain to being presented a 99 designs logo by a pricey marketing agency to his 1-liter bottle launch that in fact held 40 ounces. It is a wild ride, it is an educational ride, it is the ride of HTM 100.

Tate Huffard launched Best Day Brewing last year, an alcohol-free range of craft beers for the fun-loving, hard-charging, adventure-seeking thirsty souls for whom good is just not good enough.

Packed with relentless optimism, a distinctive brand design, and a powerful ethos, Best Day sees its beer as a comma and not a period in your journey through the day.

Tate and I talk about the significance of the ‘best day yet’ philosophy turned tagline, the process of making great alcohol-free beer, the power of simplicity in design, and how coming from the outside into an industry poses a huge opportunity to do things differently from the get-go.

Nichole Montoya, together with a designer, co-founded Cheddar Up ten years ago. The platform helps over 100,000 groups and organizations collect payments and information to support and grow their communities.

Nichole and I talk about how important design was to the success of the brand, how, as a product company, being highly aware of feature creep is a must to ensure the brand does not steer too far away from its positioning and how getting outside brand help can re-invigorate the product experience.

Charlie Weisman created a company that started by selling plungers, yes, the toilet ones, that are actually desirable. The brand is called Staff and it is quickly growing into a beloved suite of household essentials with bold colors, unique materials, and characters that are eager to help.

At Hitting The Mark I pride myself on bringing you as much the well-known, as the unusual upcoming, brands that find a way to make their brands stand out and the founders – not marketers – who have those stories to tell. Staff nicely personifies the latter.

Charlie and I talk about the 99% perfect brand name, how brand-thinking is at the core of his company, and how he was able to capture the imagination of his audience – and that of Drew Barrymore – all in an organic manner and why brand storytelling will be even more important in the future of this young company.