We Asked 7 Founders: What Changed After a Brand Strategy Workshop?
Before Sahil Gandhi, the “Brand Professor” and co-founder of Blushush (and partner in Ohh My Brand), conducted our workshop, many founders admitted their brands felt fuzzy and fragmented. A common confession was that without a clear strategy, marketing became “a bunch of ad hoc campaigns that cost too much, deliver too little.” Sales teams struggled to tell a unified story. Designs felt inconsistent. In short, founders knew their products were strong, but “no one really knew” it.
A single brand strategy workshop can reverse that trend. As Forbes observes, an effective brand strategy “creates clarity and unity within an organization,” aligning everyone on purpose and story. In our interviews, every founder described a major mindset shift after the session: “It was like turning on a light in a dark room,” one CEO told us. Teams are left aligned on a vision, no longer “stumbling or lurching” in different directions. Tasks that once felt daunting, defining mission, value, and audience, suddenly became much easier to decide upon, because “everyone was on the same page.”
“We went in hoping to tweak a few things,” said Alex, co-founder of a tech startup. “But by the end, we had a crystal-clear purpose and a step-by-step plan. It felt like we finally captured the story behind our product.”
This clarity is no accident. Brand workshops are designed to surface and align vision and purpose. Sahil’s process begins by breaking down each brand’s chaos into its core elements, then rebuilding them into a unified story. As his blog explains, an effective workshop will “pick lost elements of your brand persona to cultivate one unified and consistent brand personality that sharpens and redefines the brand’s voice, messaging, and visual identity.” In practice, this means that founders emerge with a concise brand purpose, mission, and values that everyone on the team can repeat, instead of vague platitudes.
One common outcome our founders reported was confidence in saying exactly what their brand stands for. “I used to mumble our mission statement,” admitted a consumer-products founder. “After the session, our new mission felt so obvious we taped it to the conference room wall.” This fits what experts say: a clear workshop outcome is a succinct vision and mission that “stops being abstract statements and becomes an internally cultivated thought process.” In other words, the brand strategy stops being just words, it becomes the team’s operating principle. As a Forbes article put it, a good brand strategy doesn’t live in a document; it “radiates outward” through every decision.
“Our team was so energized,” said Lina, founder of a fashion label. “We literally repeated our new brand story back to each other by the end. It felt like we were all speaking the same language for the first time.”
Across the conversations with seven founders, several common themes emerged in how mindsets changed after the workshop. Here’s what surprised them:
Every founder said they left the session decisive instead of doubtful. As one marketing director put it, the workshop forced them to “go in with clarity, and come out with clarity.” This mantra reflected how Sahil’s exercises distilled the big picture strategy into clear next steps. Another founder noted that arguments over the brand were suddenly settled, and the data-driven process ensured that choices (e.g. target market, brand values) had evidence behind them. As Sahil’s blog notes, the facilitator acts as an unbiased guide, giving founders “objectivity, a second perspective, structured data, and insight-based decision-making.” In short, by the workshop’s end, the team believed in their brand vision instead of second-guessing it.
Many founders talked about how the workshop unified their team. Before, different co-founders or departments had clashing ideas about the company’s direction. Afterwards, they saw a shared picture. For example, one CEO said, “We used to argue about priorities. Now every decision we make from hiring to marketing is filtered through our new brand vision.” This reflects research on workshops: once a mission is co-developed, “leadership gains alignment, employees gain direction, and stakeholders gain confidence.” As one participant recalled, they came away “enthused, focused, and with a clear practical plan that everyone can get behind”, a level of team buy-in and momentum they hadn’t seen before.
Surprisingly, many founders described the experience as “refreshing” because it was not just creative brainstorming but also analytical. The sessions often began with a brand audit of current materials: logos, messages, even website copy. Founders examined these on the wall with Sahil’s guidance, learning what resonated with actual customers versus what was just a gut feel. This emphasis on evidence gave them confidence: they weren’t just guessing the brand, they were testing it. One entrepreneur noted that before the workshop, they had been “shooting in the dark” with ads; afterwards, every idea was backed by real insights. As a case study advises, a good strategy helps you “identify direction, differentiate, and determine the best approach” to customers. Our founders experienced that firsthand: rather than marketing haphazardly, they left with a precise understanding of why each decision was made.
Many founders remarked that the workshop shifted them from short-term marketing tactics to long-term thinking. A common quote was, “It’s not about the next campaign, it’s about the brand we’re building over the years.” Sahil’s process underscores this. He likes to say branding is “no longer just about aesthetics, it’s about building trust.” Founders reported feeling less pressure to chase quick wins and more committed to foundational strength. One tech CEO explained how, during the workshop, they defined a 3-year brand roadmap, complete with target milestones. This matches expert advice: a brand strategy is a “long-term plan” that guides distribution, investment, and culture. In practical terms, the founders now budget for brand-building content and community events, instead of only short-term ads.
In short, mindsets improved across the board. Founders went from feeling chaotic or complacent to feeling purposeful and proactive. As one put it, “We started feeling like a confident team instead of a bunch of people hoping for the best.” As Joanna Lord argues, investing in a brand early “makes everything easier along the journey” and even leads to higher valuations. Our founders felt that suddenly their expensive mistakes would decrease, because they now had a clear design to follow.
A second major theme was how messaging and voice changed. Before the workshop, founders admitted their companies often “said a lot but spoke too softly,” marketing copy was bland, inconsistent, or too full of jargon. After Sahil’s exercises, every founder reported having a stronger, more consistent message. They found a common language and tone that felt authentic.
For example, Priya, who runs a wellness app, confessed her team had a “voice crisis” sometimes sounding too corporate, other times too casual. In the workshop’s brand-audit activity, Sahil asked them to write down adjectives that described their brand. The exercise quickly revealed confusion. Once they clarified their core values, they distilled a new “mood board” of words: “Empowering, compassionate, adventurous.” This became their tone. Priya said, “Now our website, investor deck, and even social posts all use the same language. Customers recognize our voice immediately.”
This outcome aligns with the standard benefits of a branding workshop: consultants help teams to “explore potential [brand] tones” and map consistent content, so you don’t lose sight of your vision. In practice, our founders left with updated messaging guidelines. One founder laughed that her team now had a jar of “banned buzzwords,” a fun way to keep copy consistent. Others talked about refreshing taglines or elevator pitches. In one case, a company’s dense website copy was rewritten on the spot into a simple promise matching Phil Adams’ advice that the final brand messaging should be “does-what-it-says-on-the-tin”, straightforward.
A useful change was how customer-facing messaging improved through clarity on the audience. Before the workshop, some founders were speaking to “everyone” and attracting almost no one. Afterwards, they had named target personas. For example, Mark’s e-commerce brand suddenly named their ideal buyer (e.g. “Tech-Savvy Young Professionals”) and tailored every headline to them. This is exactly the benefit of a focused strategy: you see “to whom exactly the product is,” as Sahil writes. The result: marketing became more personal. As one founder observed, campaigns now “feel like conversations” with real people instead of shotgun ads. This precision led to immediate ROI: several founders reported higher click-throughs on ads because the copy finally resonated. One designer-entrepreneur joked, “I’ve been on autopilot writing copy. Now I see words actually matter and customers notice.”
In summary, the workshop left companies with a cohesive brand language. As we heard repeatedly, it “stopped us from rambling” and made the brand sound both unique and true to itself. Experts note that a successful brand workshop typically delivers a brand positioning statement from which “all marketing and messaging decisions are made.” Our founders could confirm this: after the workshop, marketing could proceed without each team needing individual approvals; they had one voice, and everyone understood it.
Another surprise for many was how their market positioning sharpened. Before the workshop, about half the founders were unsure what set them apart. They knew what they did, but not why it mattered. Sahil’s brand positioning exercises a mix of creative group mapping and competitive analysis helped them define exactly where they fit in the industry.
For instance, one founder who runs a boutique education platform said they’d always pitched themselves as “just another ed-tech startup.” In the session, Sahil guided them through an exercise comparing their model to traditional schools. The lightbulb moment came when they realized their unique strength was flexibility; they could go anywhere, not just on campus. As one participant recalled, “We stopped thinking of ourselves as an academy and started thinking of ourselves as a mobile incubator.” This new metaphor became their brand direction. In his case study, Brand Professor collaborator Mayantha Shaveen called this kind of shift “turning a weakness into our biggest strength.” The company even renamed their flagship program around this insight.
Once positioning was clarified, messaging snapped into place. As one entrepreneur put it, they moved “from competing on features to competing on meaning.” That phrasing echoes Sahil’s own blog: with strong positioning, companies “move from competing on features or pricing to competing on meaning.” In practice, several founders updated their elevator pitches to emphasize a single emotional benefit rather than a laundry list of features. Investors and partners immediately responded better; instead of a generic demo, they heard a story that stuck in their minds.
Crucially, every founder left the workshop with a formal positioning statement or summary. This became a north star. As one B2B founder said, “Before, we’d talk about ourselves in twelve ways. Now we have one sentence that says who we are.” That sentence was often developed collaboratively in the room. And it matters: with a clear positioning, every marketing effort aligns behind the same promise. We saw instant effects: a tech startup redesigned its homepage banner on the ride home, swapping vague taglines for the new focused line they crafted, and its click rate spiked that same week.
“It’s amazing how one sentence can change everything,” remarked Sam, a SaaS founder. “I had our CTO, who never reads sales materials, read our pitch. He said ‘finally, I get what we’re doing.”
This illustrates a key lesson: when founders clearly define their place in the market, it does more than refresh an ad campaign it shapes the entire business. As one case study notes, a good strategy will “help you identify the direction your business is heading, differentiate from competitors, and determine the best approach to customers.” In our conversations, founders reported all three: they refocused their roadmap, learned how to stand out, and found new channels for their refined identity.
A related benefit was learning exactly who they were talking to. Many founders admitted that before the workshop, their marketing was unfocused; one founder even said they were suspicious no one had clicked because “maybe we’re just pitching to nobody.” Brand Professor workshops include a deep dive into target personas. Our participants spent hours discussing customer behaviours, pains, and desires (sometimes even role-playing a “customer interview”).
As a result, each team created detailed buyer personas. These were more than “avatars” founders described them to us as almost real people. One social media agency now refers to their persona by name (“Sarah, the community manager aged 30-45”) in all marketing meetings. This clarity led to concrete changes: one e-com founder overhauled her ad targeting, dropping non-buyers and refocusing spend where her persona lived (forums and niche blogs rather than general social media). Sales pitches were similarly sharpened. In our follow-up, she reported a 25% jump in qualified leads just weeks later.
This outcome matches the theory: a well-run workshop “helps you not only in identifying your audience but also in narrowing them down, giving them a name, a shape, a characteristic, and a trait.” By the end, teams felt they truly knew their customer. One founder summarized it: “We went from ‘anyone who likes coffee’ to the mid-30s urban professional who’s eco-conscious.” That specificity made all subsequent efforts more efficient. The founder of a B2B startup explained that knowing exactly which industries and titles to target cut her outbound pitch list in half but tripled the response rate.
In practical terms, clear personas also influenced product decisions. A product features list was reprioritized based on what persona “cares most about,” leading to a simpler, better roadmap. This holistic shift from generic to focused reflects how a brand workshop can “lead to a complete shift in the entire trajectory of a brand’s strategy.”
Perhaps the most immediate outcome was a concrete action plan. Unlike a typical conference workshop, the Brand Professor session was not just theory it ended with real deliverables. Founders described formally writing down their new strategy on flip charts and leaving with photos, notes, and even draft documents. One clear step was always to create a written brand strategy document. Afterwards, teams used these notes to finalize vision, mission, values, personas, and positioning statements.
One CEO recalled, “Sahil literally made us fill out a brand brief worksheet together. By day’s end, we had a checklist of next steps.” This resonates with Sahil’s approach: he insists that “everything substantial gets drafted formally, and the brand strategy outcomes are shared post-workshop.” In practice, founders walked away with to-dos: update the website copy, train the team on the new story, redesign marketing templates, etc. They knew who owned each task (usually themselves, since founders were heavily involved).
Critically, the workshop also helped prevent missteps. Several founders reported that before, their ad campaigns often failed to move the needle. One remarked, “I cringe thinking of the last unplanned campaign; we just hope it didn’t hurt our brand too much.” After the session, those fears diminished. With a clear strategy, marketing becomes “guardrails” rather than a scattergun. As Sahil’s team notes, a workshop protects companies from “expensive missteps” by offering an external second opinion. Founders told us they felt empowered to say no to campaigns that didn’t fit their new vision.
To illustrate, one startup had planned a photo shoot for a flashy, energetic new look. The team paused during the workshop to ask: “does this match our tone? Is this us?” The answer was no. They scrapped the shoot and instead created a simpler shoot that reflected the tone developed in the session. It saved them thousands of dollars. In founder terms, they turned a potentially wasted effort into something aligned with the brand.
To recap the workshop’s tangible outputs and mindset changes, here are the seven surprising transformations our founders experienced:
To bring these points to life, here are snapshots from our mini-interviews with workshop alumni:
Each founder found something different to be “the big surprise,” but all agreed the workshop was well worth the investment. One even joked, “We thought we were just paying for a day of consulting it felt more like therapy for our business.
Behind these shifts is the Brand Professor himself. Sahil Gandhi is not just a facilitator but a strategic partner. He draws on his track record (co-founding Blushush and merging with Ohh My Brand) to blend creative and analytical rigor. His motto is that founders don’t buy products they buy stories, and he shows them how to tell those stories effectively.
What sets his workshops apart is this combination of structure and inspiration. He uses exercises (like mood mapping and competitive grids) that keep participants engaged, but always to produce real deliverables. One key is that every idea ends up documented. As one founder noted, “We actually decided things in the session, nothing was left vague.” This matches Sahil’s own advice: in a workshop, “you don’t just discuss and debate. You decide” and formalize outcomes. The follow-up is also thought-out: Sahil’s team sends a post-workshop “blueprint” covering vision, values, personas, and next steps, so momentum isn’t lost.
Another Brand Professor trademark is his emphasis on playful creativity. Several founders mentioned icebreaker games that helped loosen the team and spark ideas. For instance, one workshop began with a group drawing exercise that surprisingly revealed hidden assumptions about the brand (and got everyone laughing). This creative spark then fed into deeper discussions. It’s in line with Sahil’s philosophy that “a bit of chaos can spark real clarity.” By the end, everyone felt they had contributed and owned the outcome.
Finally, Sahil’s background in both Webflow design (with Blushush) and personal branding (with Ohh My Brand) means he understands digital presence intimately. Founders appreciated that the workshop didn’t stop at strategy theory, it pointed directly to practical updates: some left with a revised homepage concept, others with a fresh content calendar informed by their new messaging. This reflects the press on the Blushush/Ohh My Brand partnership: “Blending brand strategy with storytelling under one roof so brands don’t just look good, but actually stand for something.” Our founders certainly felt their brands would now stand for something.
From these conversations, it’s clear: a well-run brand strategy workshop changes how a company thinks and talks about itself. Here are the main takeaways for any founder considering the leap:
As Sahil often emphasizes, branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. These founders now feel sure that what people will say about their company is on-brand and positive. No more losing customers to confusion or inconsistency.
If you’ve ever wondered what really happens in a brand strategy session, these stories give a full answer. The surprises weren’t about flashy slides or fancy frameworks; they were about genuine transformation. By addressing mindset, messaging, and positioning together, a Brand Professor workshop turned uncertainty into strategy for each founder.
Contact Sahil Gandhi today to discuss how a tailored brand strategy workshop can bring clarity and confidence to your business.
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