Forging an Ironclad Brand

A Leader's Guide

By: Lindsay Pedersen

Narrated by: Lindsay Pedersen

Good brand is just good business.

Brand is the intentional leader’s North Star. It helps us engage customers and employees, unleash our competitive advantage, and fuel enduring growth.

And yet, despite this power, brand is grossly underused. Few leaders leverage brand fully, believing (wrongly) that brand is squishy and elusive. But when a tool this vital is dismissed, the business suffers mightily.

The good news is that all leaders can ignite brand to create value.

Lindsay Pedersen deconstructs what brand is and why it is indispensable for leaders. Then she shares her step-by-step process to tame the infinite possibilities and pinpoint a brand positioning that is true and robust - ironclad - to unlock the most value.

In this book, learn how to….

• Leverage brand as a strategic platform for growing with purpose.
• Lead more effectively with brand as your North Star.
• Use brand to excite customers and employees.
• Identify your Uncommon Denominator and Benefit Ladder.
• Follow the principles of storytelling to generate business growth.

Brand is sorely underutilized. When you ignore it or use it only superficially, you forgo your most sustainable competitive advantage. It’s time to start using brand as your North Star - it’s time to make your brand ironclad.

©2019 Lindsay Pedersen (P)2022 Lindsay Pedersen

A must have guide for leaders

"Forging an Iron Clad Brand" is a must have guide for leaders. Full of practical insights, concrete examples and clear 'how to's' - this book will help leaders and team members understand brand in a meaningful way. Lindsay Pedersen is a compelling writer and narrater. Highly recommend!

A perfect book for your business toolbox!

This book should be in every business owner, leader, executive, or manager toolbox! Lindsay does a remarkable job breaking down the complexity (and value) of brand strategy into manageable pieces. She shares real-life examples of where top companies win (and lose) the customer's attention because of their brand. Through her "Uncommon Denominator" framework, she drills down how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors. I am a small business owner and I loved this book, but I can see how this would be an excellent book for teams.

Excellent Guide for Leaders and Marketers

This book provides a highly useful, clear, and concise framework with many helpful illustrative examples. Well narrated.

Smart, accessible, and essential reading

Must read for any marketing team, entrepreneur, start up, and strategy/ops teams. Lindsay Clarke has a brilliant strategic mind: she breaks down the “why” and the “how” behind iconic brand strategy in a way that is clear, engaging, and concise. Highly rec and particularly love the audio version. Her voice is easy to listen to and the delivery is clear and compelling,

Engaging and packed with insights

Pedersen manages to make the concept of brand relevant to everyone (as it should be) and manages to make a business book entertaining and engaging (as it rarely is). The book is riddled with relevant and specific examples that illustrate and bring to life her assertions about brand. Her methodical march through the why and hows of branding is easy to follow and it just makes intuitive sense.

The book also counters the misconception that brand is nebulous and hard to pin down; all about feelings and logos. Pedersen makes a solid and compelling business case for brand's central role in pricing power and enduring competitive advantage. You will definitely come away from this book seeing brand in a new light.

There is no fluff or filler here - every sentence is gold. I started taking notes on concepts I wanted to remember, but found that I was basically transcribing the entire book. On a side note, I usually get nervous when an author narrates their own book, but it seems this author could have had an alternate career as a voice artist - very pleasant listening .

So Good I Bought the Paperback Too

This book is AMAZING - far and away the best business-related book I’ve read in years. I realized halfway through that the insights were too valuable to just try and remember after listening to them - I needed to actually go through the steps she suggests in detail. So I bought the paperback too in order to reference as I go through her process. I’ve begun to do so and it is already transforming the way I run my business to make it way more focused on what matters, and far more valuable to customers.

The ideas in this book are laid out extremely clearly, and each of them feels like a treasure I discovered. There is no fluff, the writing is superb and easy to follow - her use of story to illustrate her points really helps integrate what she has to say.

Also, her narration is stellar. Even though I bought the paperback as well, I’m happy I first heard everything in her own voice.

As a mentor to young business leaders, a business owner myself, and a writer, I will be recommending this book to anyone starting a business or wanting to take their business to the next level.

Unique insight into the deep power of brand to propel growth

Most professional marketers know that brand is important to a business's success. But do most CEOs know? And do most marketers really know, on a deep and demonstrable level, exactly why and how brand should be deployed in service of business growth? If you're a CEO trying to understand how to best leverage brand - or a marketing professional working with leaders to help them understand this - read this book immediately. Lindsay Pedersen has peeled back the onion on brand, sharing with us precisely what brand is and why it's so powerful - and then she dives step-by-step into how to do it, using her own proprietary process honed over the course of decades. This is incredibly valuable insight, shared in an easy-to-understand format, peppered with memorable stories from real-world brands. It's a critical - and enjoyable - read for all leaders and marketers.

Game Changing

I was struggling with messaging for my startup soda brand and this book helped me see clearly and execute. Not only that, but I bought the book for 7-8 of my peers in marketing because I loved it so much.

I even reached out to Lindsay personally just to thank her for such a useful book and she responded within hours!

Absolutely love this book.