Hein Lam | Identify Your User Persona With Brand Story

Discover Your Brand Story

Hein Lam founded Huck Finch in Ann Arbor, MI after deciding that medical school wasn’t for him. He wanted to work with groups of people on a larger scale, and needed more creativity in his life. Today, he specializes in brand messaging, strategy, and positioning for creative entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, and small businesses that want to scale their business.

Although he is not a designer himself, he draws brand story inspiration from Japanese aesthetic, minimalism, and mid-century design.

“What story can you tell in the white space? Because you don’t want things to get cluttered and confused.”

He approaches building a brand story with that philosophy, by communicating with important elements that are present in the ancient Greek stories and films that matter. When you can identify the persona of your user with a story, this resonates with them and builds trust immediately.

Important Elements:

1. A hero: your customer
2. A villain: every great hero has a villain, which can look like an internal struggle or problem. It doesn’t have to be external.
3. A trigger that leads to…
4. Action!
5. A mentor or guide: this is your brand!
6. A plan to get from point A to point B.
7. Danger: if they don’t follow the plan, what could happen?
8. Epic battle.
9. Transformation: when your hero follows your plan, they reach their goal or conquer a problem.

Donald Miller’s StoryBrand Formula mirrors a similar framework, which I recently reflected on in my blog “Creating Stories That Stick.”

How to apply it:

1. Position your brand as the guide and your customer as the hero.
2. Decide whether you want to hook your customers with hope or a pain point.
3. Then, back up that statement and tell them how you will help them solve that pain point or reach their goal.
4. Offer a call to action.

Remember that 20% of what you do leads to 80% of your value or impact. Hein emphasizes the importance of identifying the two things in your business that are really going to move that needle and put your time and effort behind those factors.