When Emiel and I met, he was still working his full-time job as a marketing manager at a large recruitment software company. Emiel always knew he wanted to build his own business; he had the idea, but lacked the foundation for his brand.

We decided I could help Emiel build the foundation of his brand. And although many would start with a logo, I always start with a strategy session. For efficiency, we decided to meet via Google Teams and do the brand session in Miro. How about next Friday afternoon?

To get the most out of the session, I asked Emiel to prepare answers to a few exercises in advance. During the session, we reviewed them together. They looked promising at first glance, but the more we dug in, the clearer it became: the AI-generated answers were too generic, and the volume of information was overwhelming.

After the session, Emiel sent me a message: “I have an investor pitch coming up soon, and I’d love to incorporate some of the insights we uncovered. What parts can I use to build my story around?” He ended up building his entire pitch around them, adding character to his presentation, telling the true story of who he is, and bringing the core of why he started his business to life.