What does it take to build a brand people are obsessed with?

David Hieatt has done it three times, from one small town in west Wales: Howies, Hiut Denim, and the Do Lectures.

In this episode he opens up the craft behind all three: spotting the brand nobody has built yet, catching the right moment for it, and surviving the years when the moment hasn't arrived.

We talk about what purpose was actually for (and why the word wore out), the lucky break that nearly killed Hiut, being ten years too early with a farm-to-table restaurant, writing in the AI era, and why, after 16 years, David has gone all-in on the Do Lectures, the event he calls "a beautiful pause."

Every leader thinks their advice is more useful than it is. Michael Bungay Stanier has sold nearly two million books arguing exactly that, and he reckons AI has just proved his point.

If you want the full thinking blueprint behind this podcast, grab my book, No Bullshit Strategy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Bullsh-Strategy-Founders-Actually/dp/1803136510

Michael wrote the best-selling coaching book of the last twenty years, and he's not actually a coach. His argument is simple. The instinct to jump in with the answer, what he calls the advice monster, is the thing quietly holding your team back. Your job isn't to have the answers. It's to set the frame and let the people closest to the work find them.

Then AI arrived and sharpened the whole thing. If a machine can hand anyone a competent answer in seconds, what's a leader actually for? Michael's answer is the part that stuck with me: the things a machine can't give you. Connection, context, and the courage to make a call and stand behind it.

If you've ever confused being certain with being clear, this one's for you.

Most founders think a deal is won or lost in the pitch. April Dunford, the world's leading authority on positioning, says it's already lost before the pitch starts.

Get the full thinking behind this podcast in my book, No Bullshit Strategy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Bullsh-Strategy-Founders-Actually/dp/1803136510

Positioning is the answer to one question a buyer is always asking: why pick you over everything else? Get it wrong and you never land on the short list, and you don't survive the first call. You lose before you've begun.

In this episode:

- How to spot a real positioning problem from an awareness one

- The competitor that beats up to 70% of deals by doing nothing

- Why enterprise software and a box of cereal are sold in completely different ways

- Why April makes her clients do the positioning themselves

More from me: https://alexmhsmith.substack.com/

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