November 11, 2025 • 34 mins
Posting more isn’t your problem; conversion is. In this episode, I sit down with Ruheene Jaura, co-founder of Hey Levi and the new app Brandify, whose background includes launch work with Apple and Amazon. We unpack how AI personal branding (done right) separates you from your business brand, clarifies positioning, and drives revenue without feeding the algorithm treadmill. You’ll hear how Ruheene moved from reach to results using deep audience research, systems, and practical automation to surface the podcasts, events, and keywords your buyers already trust. If you’re scaling a 7 or 8-figure agency or business and want less bottleneck, less burnout, and more high-fit demand, this is a clear, actionable path: align your personal brand to authority-building outcomes, keep your business brand sellable, and turn visibility into pipeline.
📚 Books Mentioned
Working Backwards by Colin Bryar & Bill Carr
Explore Ruheene’s platform at brandif.ai. Start on the free tier to run deep research on your audience and map the podcasts, events, and search terms that align with your story.
Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.
- Free 30-Minute Discovery Call:
Ready to elevate your business? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Dr. William Attaway and start your journey to success.
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Get your FREE copy of Catalytic Leadership: 12 Keys to Becoming an Intentional Leader Who Makes a Difference.
Connect with Dr. William Attaway:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. William Attaway (00:00):
It is such an honor today to have Ruheen
Jara on the podcast as theco-founder of Hey Levi and a
brand new app called Brandify.
Ruheen has worked with some ofthe biggest brands known to
mankind, including Apple andAmazon.
Now she spends her timebuilding the same buyer
psychology processes that thesebig brands use into apps that
(00:24):
make them accessible andavailable to small businesses
across the globe.
Raheem, I'm so glad you'rehere.
Thanks for being on the show.
Ruheene Jaura (00:33):
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Intro (00:38):
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed
to help leaders intentionallygrow and thrive.
Here is your host, author, andleadership and executive coach,
Dr.
William Attaway.
Dr. William Attaway (00:55):
I'd love for you to share just a little
bit of your story with ourlisteners, particularly around
your journey and yourdevelopment as a leader.
How did you get started?
Ruheene Jaura (01:04):
It's interesting when you use the word leader
because I think a lot of peoplejust love that word.
Um and I think they're verycomfortable with that word.
I feel like I'm still growinginto that word and into that
role.
I feel like I'm alwayslearning.
I I never feel like I'mcompletely ahead of the pack.
So with that, I think a lot ofmy journey to what I'm doing
right now, which is, you know, Iwe just launched our second
(01:26):
software startup, um, has justbeen about figuring out how I
can help people.
I know that sounds veryoversimplified, and but really
it's always been about what isthe one thing that people are
struggling with that I that, youknow, so far, what all the all
the advice out there hasn'thelped.
And what is that thing that Icould maybe help solve based on
my experience and based on uh onmy background?
(01:48):
Um, and so very early on, ofcourse, when I was younger, that
wasn't the case.
Uh, I just wanted to get intothe movie business and uh be
glamorous and uh have my name upin the in movie credits.
And so that was my big goalwhen I was just starting out
with my career.
So I decided to get into themovie world, get into visual
effects, worked with companieslike Marvel for about eight
eight years, uh, got my name uhin the credits, so yay to me.
(02:10):
Um, I guess my name's in theAvengers, I invented a whole
bunch of things.
Um, I have an IMDB profile.
I always thought my kids wouldbe really impressed one day with
all of these stories.
They could not care less.
I am not a cool mom.
Dr. William Attaway (02:21):
Isn't that so true?
They don't care.
Ruheene Jaura (02:25):
Not at all.
They yeah, not not cool.
Nothing I could do could evermake me cool.
So I've tried to show them myIMDB profile, they could not
care less.
But that was my goal.
That's how that's how I startedreally doing those things.
And then from there, anyone whoknows me knows that I can't sit
still very long.
Um, I have to keep doing and Ihave to keep doing stuff.
Um, and so the movie world isvery, very hectic, and you get
(02:46):
really burnt out for like threeto five months, depending on the
size of the project.
And then you have a month ortwo of downtime, usually.
They're not usually back toback depending on the company
you're at.
And and the studio I was at, wedefinitely had a month or two
in between where things wouldreally slow down.
And so I was telling my bossesat the time, I was like, I can't
do this.
You need to start loaning meout.
So I got loaned out to anadvertising firm, local
(03:09):
advertising firm in SanFrancisco.
And that's how I started doinglaunch campaigns.
And so I got to be part of thelaunch campaign, actually lead
the launch campaign for theApple iPhone 5 back in 2012,
long time ago.
Uh, but a huge part of whatI've been able to bring with me
all these years and into what Ido now.
The Amazon Firephone in 2014did the a lot of failed
(03:31):
products, I will say, uh, morefailed products than I have
successful products.
But I think that is uh what hasmade me uniquely uh qualified
to talk about what works andalso equally what doesn't work.
So um so yeah, did a lot of uhbranding work, advertising work,
marketing, film, andstorytelling.
And I ended up combining all ofthat when I got into the
(03:52):
startup world and the smallbusiness world, because I
realized that a lot of smallbusinesses struggle with
positioning themselves.
It started out as, you know,helping them figure out how to
position their offers,understand the difference
between brand-led growth andproduct-led growth and sales-led
growth and all of these thingsthat a lot of people just get
thrown into and they have to nowfigure it out.
Um, and now, more recently, youknow, when I launched my first
(04:14):
startup, which is Hey Levi, uhwhen I first launched it, nobody
knew who I was, nobody caredwhat we had built, even though
it had it was something that wasvery much needed in the market.
Um, it was a positioning, itwas a branding and positioning
tool that didn't exist at thetime.
Now, of course, there are othertools that exist and do similar
things.
Uh, but at the time we were theonly ones that were approaching
it in this AI but no promptway.
(04:36):
Uh but nobody cared becausenobody knew who I was.
And no amount of telling peoplethat I worked with Apple and
Amazon mattered because thequestion is always, okay, that's
great, that's cool, but whatcan you do for me?
Right.
It it I mean, that's how welisten to That's so true.
And so that's how I realizedthat more than just developing
(04:58):
products and developingsolutions to market gaps that I
feel like I can help with, Irealized that what I needed to
focus on was positioning myselffirst.
And that led me on this journeyover the past year, year and a
half to building my personalbrand.
And I know a lot of people, alot of founders and creators,
but you know, mostly in ourworld as founders, to are trying
to get out there, build theirpersonal brand, establish
(05:22):
themselves as thought leaders intheir space, but nobody really
knows how to do it.
And the only advice that I'mhearing is keep posting on
social media and the algorithmwill take notice and you'll be
famous.
I'm exaggerating, obviously,but that's kind of just the
narrative that we're hearingover and over again.
And there I wish it were thateasy, right?
(05:42):
And my own journey, it has notbeen that easy.
I have tried posting a lot,posting a little, posting
somewhere in the middle, postingon different channels, and
honestly, just as a way of doingresearch.
And what I found is it doesn'tmatter.
Yes, if you post more times andyou're posting quality content,
I just got a message fromFacebook today that they've
increased my reach.
But what does that mean ifwe're not converting anyone?
Dr. William Attaway (06:03):
That's right.
That's right.
It's a vanity metric then, youknow?
Ruheene Jaura (06:07):
It is.
And so is engagement.
You know, a lot of people willsay, well, engagement shows
pre-conversions, but again,maybe, maybe not.
So, you know, reach is great,engagement is great, makes you
look really popular, makes youlook like you know what you're
doing.
But is it act only you knowwhether it's actually converting
into sales on the back end?
And for me, they weren't in alltransparency.
And so I realized that what Ireally needed to do was
(06:28):
understand my audience better,understand who I was serving,
what I was doing for them, whatmade me different from everybody
else who was talking aboutmaybe similar things or trying
to solve the same problems.
And a lot of that went intojust researching my audience,
understanding what they weresearching for, what they needed,
what they were listening to,what they were reading, just
understanding their whole world.
And so, yeah, that's uh that'sa long answer to your question,
(06:51):
but that's uh that's why I'mhere.
And that's why I'm sopassionate about talking about
personal branding even more thanbusiness branding at the
moment, and really helping CEOsand founders become social CEOs
so that their ideas don't gowasted.
Dr. William Attaway (07:05):
I think there's so much value in what
you're describing here, but itis something that a lot of
people misunderstand.
And I would count myself amongthem up until recently, having
heard you speak at a conferencewe were both at.
There's there's this confusion,particularly I think with
founders who want to build thebrand of what they're doing,
their business.
And, you know, we look at thethe big brands.
We've talked about, you know,Amazon and Apple and Marvel and
(07:27):
Disney, big brands that are thatare well known.
But a personal brand feels veryselfish, self-centered,
self-serving.
Like I want to build the brandof the thing, the product, the
service, not not my brand.
You talk about this and howthere's a better way to think
about that.
I'd love for you to share alittle bit about that, why it's
(07:47):
so important and why we need toget out of this mindset that
it's self-centered.
Ruheene Jaura (07:52):
Um so yeah, so a lot of people when you when they
hear branding, they're thinkingabout a company brand.
Um and I think at some pointthey're kind of mixing a little
bit of personal branding in anda little bit of business
branding in.
But it's really important tounderstand that they are and
should be separate.
And the reason I said I saythat is because, especially
because of my own experiencejust this year in 2025, um, we
(08:12):
went through nine months of anEcuhire uh deal, not really a
deal because it didn't gothrough in the end, uh, but a
conversation and a negotiation,right?
Um, and a lot of that reallymade like shed light on a lot of
things that I was kind ofpushing to aside and ignoring.
Um, you know, we've built astrong brand for Hay Levi.
And yes, I've been trying toposition myself as an expert to
(08:33):
bring more traffic into thebusiness, but I realized that
unless you have a strongbusiness brand that is
independent of you, it's harderto exit out of that business
because your face is now marriedto that business.
And a potential buyer orinvestor might question, well,
what if something happens to youor if you were to exit your
business, are we actually goingto continue, are we gonna be
(08:55):
able to continue growing it andscaling it?
So you want your business, ifyou, even if you're not thinking
about exiting your businesstoday, it's something that you
want to keep in mind becauseeven if you want to grow old
with it and take it with you,maybe one day you want to pass
it on to your to your kids or toyour family.
How do you do that when it'syour specific face that's that's
entrenched in the business?
So it's really important tothink about your business brand.
(09:17):
And all the big brands do it,right?
Think about Apple.
That's my one of my favoriteexamples because they've just
done it so well.
Apple has a really strongbrand.
Steve Jobs had a really strongbrand, but they were not the
same thing.
Steve Jobs exited, came back,got bought back in, like he
bought he built, you know, asoftware, got bought back into
Apple.
But through it all, Applecontinued to survive and thrive,
(09:38):
and it still has, even afterSteve Jobs is gone.
It's a different conversation,whether the quality of the
products is the same or not.
But you know, you know, thebrand has continued to grow,
right?
Um, and Steve Jobs had his ownpersonal brand.
You loved him or you hated him,but you couldn't ignore him.
And and nobody could claim thatthey had done what he had done
because he people knew who hewas.
And again, he was a knownpersonal brand.
(10:00):
So all that to say it's reallyimportant for your company
brand, for your business brandto have a brand of its own.
But it's also equally importantfor you to have your own
personal brand because let's sayyou do exit out of your
business and you want to dosomething else.
You're gonna be starting fromscratch if your entire brand
weren't with your company andnow nobody knows who you are.
Everybody knows your company,but now nobody knows who you
are.
So whatever you do next,whether you know you're working
(10:22):
for a larger company and youwanna go open your own thing or
you want to get a different job,or you're in a startup and you
want to start up maybe somethingelse in that parallel or after
this one.
Doesn't matter what you want todo, as long as you have your
personal brand, that's gonna gowith you.
Startup to startup, roll uproll to roll, it it travels with
you.
Dr. William Attaway (10:39):
That's fascinating.
I'm thinking of of differentexamples.
Steve's Steve Jobs is a greatone.
Think about Walt Disney.
Here's a guy who started abusiness that grew into what is
now an empire, really, allaround his name.
Right?
He was the center of the spiderweb, everything connected to
him.
But when he died, the businessdidn't fall apart.
Ruheene Jaura (10:58):
Exactly.
Dr. William Attaway (10:59):
You know, they had to change, to be sure.
How would you look at that?
Like, was he building apersonal brand in addition to
the business, or was it reallyall about the business and was
he over-identified with thebusiness?
Ruheene Jaura (11:17):
I don't think you can separate him from Disney.
I I mean, at least I can't.
Maybe I'm I'm now thinking, doI know of anything that he has
said which is not related to thebusiness directly?
Dr. William Attaway (11:27):
Right.
Exactly.
Ruheene Jaura (11:34):
Um Walt Disney ever said, and maybe that was
before my time, but yeah.
Dr. William Attaway (11:38):
Yeah, and so I'm thinking, like, do
founders fall into that trapoften where they are just
completely, completelyover-identified with the
business.
They are at the center ofeverything.
And then it becomes unsellable,like you're describing, because
you can't sell yourself.
Yes.
You know?
How do you see that more often?
Ruheene Jaura (11:57):
I see that a lot, and it's a little bit scary
because if that's yourintention, then that's fine as
long as you have a clear goal inmind and you're doing it
intentionally.
What I find scary is is talkingto founders and CEOs who don't
realize what they're doing.
They realize they've heard theterm branding.
They know that they need astrong brand, but they don't
really know what that means.
(12:17):
Just this week, I was on a callwith a longtime customer of uh
Hay Levi, and he was telling methat he just signed up for
Brandify, but he also a monthago signed up with um a branding
expert.
Um, and so I thought it wasinteresting because I asked him,
like, what is what is thisbranding expert doing for you
exactly?
What kind of branding?
Um, and he was like, Well,she's doing my logo and colors,
(12:38):
and but then also my messaging.
And then she's also positioningme as a thought leader.
So I was like, that sounds likea big mix of a lot of different
things that shouldn'tnecessarily be mixed together.
And if this is her like singlepackage, I'm sure she knows what
she's doing.
I'm this isn't I'm not tryingto throw shade to anybody, but
what worries me is that foundersare looking for branding
(12:59):
experts, going with somebody whois like, oh, I'll do all the
branding for you.
Um, and then giving themsomething where their personal
brand is just now completelymuddied up with their business
brand.
And now you can't differentiatebetween the two and they don't
know any better.
Dr. William Attaway (13:13):
I think that language is perfect,
muddied up.
That's exactly it's just all abig mud pile.
And how do you separate mud?
You know, once the dirt and thewater mix, you're never gonna
separate them again.
That is so often the branding.
So let's say one of ourlisteners is like, okay, I wanna
I want to start this personalbrand thing.
(13:33):
I need to do this.
It has been muddy, it's been,it's been all like put together.
How do I begin?
Where do I start?
What would you say?
Ruheene Jaura (13:43):
I think the first thing you want to think about
is that when you're buildingyour business brand, want, I
mean, both both brands are areall about earning your ideal
customers' trust.
At the end of the day, that'sreally what it comes down to.
I think on a on a businessbrand level, you really want to
think about how that trustconverts into sales, right?
It's not a hobby, it's abusiness.
You want to make sure thateverything that you're doing for
(14:05):
your business is convertinginto some sort of revenue for
your business so you can keepthe lights on, right?
And continue to scale.
With you as a personal brand,you want to think less about how
you're gonna immediatelyconvert that into sales.
And you wanna think about howdo you stay top of mind, you as
a person, not your company, butyou.
So if I have Hey Levi, I haveBrandify now.
(14:26):
Brandify does personalbranding, Hey Levi does business
branding.
That's the difference betweenthe two.
And then there's me, Raheen,right?
And really what I want peopleto think about is hey, I need I
have a branding problem.
My personal brand, like I needa system that's gonna help me
scale my business brand,establish me as a thought
leader, get me featured onpodcasts like this one, on the
right stages, you know, atevents that my customers are
(14:48):
going to.
I need a system that's gonna dothat and I'm willing to spend
money on it.
Well, I want them to think ofBrandify, right, as a platform.
But let's say they have aquestion and they're not really
sure.
They know they need a brand,they know they they're kind of
stuck in their business, theywant to scale, they're not sure
if they should be speaking onstages or not, they're not sure
what they should be doing.
There's so many differentthings that they're being told,
and now they don't know what todo next.
(15:08):
They really just need someoneto clarify it for them.
At that point, I want them tothink of me, right?
So I want to be the expert, ifyou will, that comes to mind
when you have a question aboutbrand-led growth, product-led
growth, how the two can work foryour business.
What does branding mean?
What is the difference betweenbusiness branding and personal
(15:29):
branding?
At what point of my journeyshould I focus on one versus the
other?
Those kinds of things you don'tnecessarily want to spend money
just to get an answer, but youwant somebody who you feel like
is in your corner who will helpyou navigate that and figure out
what you need to do next.
Dr. William Attaway (15:42):
And that's the expertise of a professional,
somebody who's got the track,who's got the experience, who
can speak using that languageand that that knowledge base and
bring it to bear for thequestions and the challenges
that you're facing.
And I love that you havestepped into that space for
yourself and said, hey, this iswho I want to be.
So when you made that decision,what were some of the things
(16:06):
that you began to dodifferently?
Ruheene Jaura (16:08):
So that's where this whole journey started,
right?
I realized that just simply,you know, telling people about
this amazing product I had builtthat was going to solve all of
their branding problems wasn'tactually going to do it.
Um, and so I really had to digdeep to understand, first of
all, like understanding what ismy who is my audience, right?
Like who am I really targeting?
It can't be like all foundersacross the world for every
(16:29):
company.
It was, you know, who am Ireally speaking to?
Who can I who who do I have theability to help?
Right?
I don't have any experience ine-commerce, for example.
So if you have an e-commerbusiness, I could tell you about
business branding and personalbranding.
I can help you build yourthought leadership.
But when it comes to reallydoing product led versus brand
led sales for your business, Imay not be the best person.
(16:52):
But if you're a tech founder,if you are a SaaS founder, if
you're in the software space,then I can help you because that
is my experience.
So yeah.
So so one part of it is justunderstanding who am I really
talking to, who am I speakingto, who can I help really help,
and who do I want to be helping?
The next thing isunderstanding, not just, you
(17:12):
know, a lot of people will say,well, this is my audience, this
is the demographics, these aretheir pain points, and so this
is my solution.
Right?
That's the customer journey.
But there's so much more thatgoes into it because what are
they really buying when they buyfrom you?
What are they really lookingfor when they come and see you
at a conference and they want tohave a conversation with you?
There's a lot of nuances, andyou really need to understand
(17:35):
what it is that they're lookingfor.
How can you really serve themin a meaningful way?
And to understand that, itreally comes down to
understanding what is keepingthem up at night, what are they
searching for?
What are they looking for?
Where are they looking forthese answers?
Dr. William Attaway (17:48):
And this goes back to the buyer
psychology processes.
You're really trying to getinside their head and trying to
think how and trying to discoverhow they think so that you can
intersect their problem with thesolution that you can bring so
that you can serve them.
Ruheene Jaura (18:04):
Exactly.
Dr. William Attaway (18:04):
But understanding the question, the
right question is essential tobeing able to provide the right
answer.
Ruheene Jaura (18:09):
Yes, exactly.
And again, what you justtouched on is a little bit of
both things.
So from your business brand,you want to be thinking about
what their decision-makingjourney looks like?
What is what do they base theirdecisions on?
Dr. William Attaway (18:21):
Right?
Ruheene Jaura (18:22):
Understanding that, really diving deep into
their what people callpsychographics, but I think it's
so much deeper than justpsychographics.
It's really understanding whothey are as a person, what
drives them to, what motivatesthem to make decisions.
That's what you want tounderstand at the business brand
level, because you want tounderstand A, is this person the
right fit for to be a customerfor what you can offer?
And B, what's going to helpthem, what's going to help them
(18:44):
make the next step and buy fromyou.
But in a business, you know,when you're speaking to somebody
at an event, for example, Idon't just start talking about,
hey, Levi and Brandify.
I'm talking about, I'm I'mwaiting to see what their
question is about where they'restruggling in their business,
where they're struggling intheir own positioning and
thought leadership.
So I can help answer questionsfor them and I can be of service
to them because that way I'mgoing to be top of mind next
(19:07):
time they think about a questionlike this, or their their
friend has this problem, ortheir business partner has this
problem.
They're like, hey, you know,Raheem really helped me.
You should go talk to her.
That's a little, a littledifferentiator between they're
aligned.
What your business does andwhat you do is probably aligned,
but they need to be rated andthe goal is different.
Dr. William Attaway (19:27):
I love that mindset and that perspective
that you begin, you lead off byserving.
You lead off by saying, How canI help?
instead of, hey, here's mything.
Do you want to buy it?
Which is where I think so manyentrepreneurs mess up.
Yes.
They start with a big askinstead of starting by serving.
And I love that you broughtthat out.
I think that's something that Ihope every listener who's
(19:47):
hearing this is jotting down asa growth area because I think
it's a growth area for every oneof us.
So you've launched Brandify,brand new.
Tell us a little bit about it.
Like what is it, what is it,how does it intersect this
problem?
How can people jump into this?
And and what is this, what doyou see this doing in the
markets, particularly the smallbusiness market?
Ruheene Jaura (20:10):
Yeah.
And so I like that you askedspecifically about the small
business market becausesomething that me and and my
co-founder, who's also myhusband, we've both worked with,
and in his case, for largercompanies like Apple and Amazon.
And one thing that we had incommon, and the reason why we we
feel so passionately about whatwe do and what we create
together, is we've always lookedat how these bigger brands do
things.
(20:30):
And our brains have always goneto well, how do we democratize
this and how do we bring this tomore people who don't have
those resources and the bigbudget that these big companies
do?
Um, you know, because they makeit look so easy.
They make growth look so easy,they make branding look so easy.
Like, how how can you replicatethat and bring those tools and
frameworks to small businesses?
And so that's what we did withHey Levi.
We really did it's a businessbranding tool that helps you
(20:53):
really dig deep into yourcustomer avatars and validate
your offers and build a brandlevel presence for your
business.
Um, and then of course do allthe copywriting and content that
comes with it.
Something that we shifted ourfocus to this year, like I said,
is personal branding.
And we realized that it's awhole, it's a it's a very
different shift, right?
You can't just apply the samethings to your personal brand
because we saw a lot of peopleactually signing up for Hailey
(21:14):
Vi and trying to create contentthat would position themselves
as a thought leader.
And we realized it wasn't gonnawork that way because it's the
frameworks you use are verydifferent.
The approach you use is verydifferent.
And so when we really startedto pull apart like what has
worked for me over this pastyear and a half, I'm still a
growing personal brand.
I'm definitely not where I wantto be.
I'm still very, like very muchmidway, I would say, to where I
(21:35):
want to be.
But a lot of what has worked isjust spending the time on
research.
Now with AI, AI is, you know,this magical tool that will do
everything for you.
And I see a lot of people justjumping into ChatGPT and saying,
This is what I do, this is whoI do it for, write me my next 30
days of content.
Right?
Dr. William Attaway (21:53):
Poof, there it is.
Ruheene Jaura (21:55):
And I see, and it and it, it, it bothers me
because I feel like people areget being fed this narrative,
this promise that, hey, just askChatGPT and you'll you can have
30 days of content, and now youcan post three times a day,
five times a day, ten times aday, and the algorithms will
love you, you'll you'll furtheryour reach and you're done.
Except that's exactly whateverybody else in your industry
is doing too.
(22:16):
That's right.
So unless there's somethingdifferent about what you're
doing or what you're tellingChatGPT, which there may be
because your story is differentfrom somebody else's, but most
people are not focusing on whatthat differentiation factor,
right?
They're they're just saying,This is my expertise, this is
who I help write me compellinglanguage.
And so, yeah, it's like if youput that in your prompt, it's
(22:36):
suddenly gonna be verycompelling.
But again, that's what everyoneelse is doing.
And so how do you really standout?
You're not gonna be top of mindif you're just doing what
everybody else is doing.
Again, the algorithm might loveyou, that might be true.
You might increase your reach.
I just increased my reachtoday, and I don't even post
every day, by the way.
But but the the important partis are you attracting the right
kind of people?
Are the right kind of peopleseeing your message?
(22:56):
And are they reaching out toyou to have conversations?
And I can say yes.
Ever since I was I startedbecoming really, really mindful
about making sure that my post,my content is about what I I
know I can help people with, andnot just putting something up
there for the sake of putting itup there, um, just for the to
have my, you know, have thealgorithm be happy with me.
I notice that I I may not onthe front of it, I don't have
(23:19):
like, I have a couple of, Idon't know, like a couple of
million followers on Facebook,but like not like a like 10
million like a lot of peoplehave.
So it's not huge and my reachis still growing.
But I have the right people inmy DMs asking me to have
conversations with them.
I'm having really good Zoomconversations, I'm converting
people on a very regular basis.
We're just one week intoBrandify, and we already have
(23:41):
um, I don't want to share itsspecific numbers here, but like
we already have or a much largergroup than I was expecting of
early adopters on the on theplatform.
So I know that my content isdoing its job.
And so um to answer yourquestion of like how, um, it's
really about understanding thatAI can do much more than just
write your content for you.
Right?
(24:02):
I talk about research.
AI has the capability of doingdeeper research than you, that
than you as a human could bedoing.
I don't know if deep researchis a term that most people are
familiar with, but um, for thosethat aren't, um, deep research
simply means looking at all theavailable resources on the
internet to to pull them alltogether and to see what the
(24:24):
actual answer to something is.
What we do is we'll go toGoogle or ChatGPT now and ask a
question.
It'll pull up some five to tenresources that we'll maybe skim
over, pick one that we like, andgo with it.
But that's not deep research,right?
That's not scouring tens ofthousands and hundreds of
thousands of articles to reallygather the information that you
need so you have a fuller,bigger picture of what you need
(24:46):
to understand about youraudience.
And so that's what Brandifydoes.
It really helps you, it does alot of deep research.
It has multiple agents thatwill go out, do their deep
research on your audience, helpyou understand who they are,
what kind of content they'reconsuming, what are their search
terms every single week, whichevents are they going to, which
podcasts are they listening to,what third-party blog sites are
they reading, and how you canfeature yourself on in each of
(25:08):
these places.
Dr. William Attaway (25:11):
That is so powerful.
I love that distinction of deepresearch.
You know, when I was working onmy dissertation, I mean,
reading hundreds of articles andbooks and you know, diving so
deep to have a tool like what wehave at our disposal with AI
back in those days would havebeen astounding.
Ruheene Jaura (25:30):
Exactly.
Dr. William Attaway (25:30):
What you're doing is is leveraging that
power for the benefit of a smallbusiness who probably doesn't
have the the deep pockets thatthe larger ones do.
You're gonna help them to buildthis brand in a powerful way.
I can't wait to see where thisgoes.
I think this is gonna beamazing.
I mean I know we're very earlyin the journey, yes, but in a
(25:53):
little bit we're gonna talkabout how our listeners can jump
into this, how they can engage.
Before we do that, though, Iwant to talk about you for just
a minute.
You are having to lead yourcompanies now at a higher level
than you did just a few yearsago.
More is demanded of you, andthree, four, five years from
now, more will be demanded yet.
How do you level up as aleader?
(26:15):
How do you make sure that youare keeping your shaw as sharp
as possible so that you can meetthe demands of your team, your
clients, and the businesses thatyou lead?
Ruheene Jaura (26:27):
Yeah, it's a great question, and probably one
that I'd be able to answer muchbetter when I'm not one week
into a software launch, I willsay it.
Dr. William Attaway (26:35):
Fair enough.
Ruheene Jaura (26:36):
Probably not my best self right now, but with
that, I think in general it justcomes down to making sure that
you never stop talking topeople.
I think one of the reasons whymy team has faith in me, and
I've um I'm super grateful andhumbled to have a team where
both me and my husband have beentold that they don't care where
we go or what company we'restarting, they just want to go
(26:58):
with us because they know it'sgonna be a good ride.
That is extremely meaningful,and and we don't take that
lightly at all.
And so I think so good.
Yeah, and it's interesting thatyou're asking this question
because it made me think aboutwell, we're doing something
right, but what is that?
What are we doing right so wecan do more of it?
Um, and I think it comes downto how do you handle difficult
(27:18):
situations?
How do you handle uh stressfulsituations?
I mean, for those of you thatare doing software, you know
that there are bumps on the roadand they never stop.
You know, when you're launchinga new product or service or
software, uh, in our case, thereare a lot of things that will
go wrong right at the lastminute.
How do you handle that?
Or when you have think it'sgonna, you're gonna do something
(27:40):
and then there's a curveball oryou know, somebody may have,
you know, may have promised yousomething and isn't able to
deliver on that.
Like, how do you continue on?
Who do you blame?
It's so easy for us to be like,well, it happened because you
failed on this, right?
And so I think really makingsure that no matter how tired
and stressed you are, you'realways grounded in reality.
(28:00):
That grounding in reality meansthat these things are bound to
happen.
Lame it is not the way to go.
It's really understanding wherewe failed, what we can do next
to make sure we don't feel likethat again, and what impact has
it really had to our businessand what does that mean for us
next?
What do we need to do next?
Right.
I think and a lot of that justcomes again from me talking to
(28:21):
customers.
That's a part of my job that Iwill never give up is just
talking to people to reallyunderstand where are we meeting
their expectations so that whensomething goes wrong, you know
that you're still solving a veryreal problem for very real
people and you know the impactit's having, and that's what you
take back to your team.
Those are the stories you tellyour team.
Dr. William Attaway (28:39):
That's so good.
I love the the evaluativeaspect of that, how you are
asking the right questions sothat you grow and you get
better.
I think that's so, so importantin the life of every leader.
Love that you're doing that.
And I think your team'sresponse that wherever you guys
go, we want to go, that speaksvolumes to y'all as leaders.
(29:00):
Way to go.
Ruheene Jaura (29:02):
It's huge.
And we we carry that with usand we remind ourselves and each
other.
My husband and I remind eachother of that when things go get
hard.
Dr. William Attaway (29:09):
Is there a book that has made a really big
difference in your journey thatyou would recommend to the
leaders who are listening?
Ruheene Jaura (29:15):
Yeah, there are actually quite a few books, but
the one book that comes to mindspecifically for the way I
handle business, and again, thisis very specific, not really
myself, but business, is a bookcalled Working Backwards.
It's actually modeled on Amazonand how Amazon came to be and
how their culture came to be.
Um and it's been one of thosebooks.
There aren't a lot of books onmy bookshelf that I keep going
(29:35):
back to.
There are a lot of books on mybookshelf that I mean to keep
going back to.
Dr. William Attaway (29:40):
That's good.
Ruheene Jaura (29:42):
Probably only one or two books that I actually
find myself bookmarking andgoing back to and looking for
those pages over and over again.
Um, and working backwards wouldbe that one book that I go back
to very, very often.
Dr. William Attaway (29:53):
I've not read this and now I'm going to,
but thank you for that.
Ruheene Jaura (29:56):
Yeah, yeah, check it out.
Dr. William Attaway (29:58):
So, last question.
You know, people, people lookat you and they think, oh my
goodness, what a rocket ride ofa journey.
You know, hearing your storyfrom Hollywood to the companies
that you run now, I mean, mygoodness, your journey's just
been up and to the right.
You m you you don't have any ofthe same challenges I deal
with.
You don't struggle like I do asa business owner.
(30:20):
And of course, we know that'ssilly.
You know, we can't look atsomebody's highlight reel and
think it tells the whole story.
So in light of that, I want toask you this.
If I had the ability to snap myfingers and solve one problem
in your business right now, whatwould you like that problem to
be?
Ruheene Jaura (30:38):
I think it would be like we just launched a new
software, and I think it wouldbe if you could fast forward the
next three years for us so thatwe don't have to go through all
the painful growth phase.
That would be what you what Iwould you felt that's a big ask.
That's to say that I don't havebad days or bad times.
(31:00):
I have bad years and they don'tstop.
As long as you're growing,you're doing difficult things,
and it just depends.
It all comes down to whatyou're focusing on.
Um and again, it those are thedays the way you remind yourself
of who are you helping.
And if you know that you'reactually making a difference in
somebody else's life, it helpsyou push through.
And so good.
I'm not gonna lie.
I mean, yes, I talk about Appleand Amazon, all these big
(31:21):
brands, but like I said, nobodycared when I was done with that
and I wanted to start my ownthing.
Nobody cared about that.
That didn't make customers comeknocking at my door saying, Can
I buy your thing?
Because you worked at Apple andAmazon.
Dr. William Attaway (31:34):
Right.
Ruheene Jaura (31:35):
You know, like nobody cared.
And so to for me to reallyaccept that and accept that I
was a nobody when I when Istarted getting into the the
small business worlds and thestartup worlds, I was a nobody.
Nobody cared about me, nobodycared about what I had to say.
Accepting that and thenfiguring out how to get past
that, how to grow past that hasnot been easy.
I'm still struggling throughit.
I'm still only halfway there,like I said.
(31:56):
So I have lots of hard days,lots of hard weeks and months
and years.
Dr. William Attaway (32:02):
So appreciate your transparency.
You're spot on.
People don't care about whatyou used to do.
You know?
Uh I've said for a long time,people's favorite radio station
is W-I-I-F-M.
What's in it for me?
You know?
And that's what we listen to,most of us.
Ruheene Jaura (32:19):
Yeah, I mean, if you've been in marketing, you've
heard this, right?
Like everything you talk about,it's like, so what?
Dr. William Attaway (32:24):
So what?
Ruheene Jaura (32:25):
So what?
Because that's what youraudience is thinking.
So what?
Dr. William Attaway (32:28):
That's right.
That's so true.
Reena, I just want to thank youfor your generosity today, of
your time and of thetransparency you've brought into
this conversation about yourjourney, things you've learned
so far on that journey.
I know our listeners are goingto want to stay connected to you
and learn more about Brandify.
What is the best way for themto do that?
Ruheene Jaura (32:49):
The best way would be to just check out the
software.
We have a free tier that itdoes for free.
It will take your story, itwill go run the agents for you,
it will do the deep research onyour audience, tell you what
they're searching for this week,where they're hanging out, what
kind of uh content they'reconsuming.
And also how your story fillsin some of the market gaps for
those search terms and whatthey're looking for, how you can
(33:12):
position yourself, how you cantell your story.
It will do all of that forfree.
Just yeah, just uh get all thevalue that you can out of it.
So um the website isbrandif.ai.
Um and I'm gonna say that onemore time because we call it
brandify because of the AI atthe end.
Unfortunately, we've had a lotof people go to brandify with a
why, and that is not our domain.
(33:32):
Brandif.ai.
Dr. William Attaway (33:36):
So good.
We'll have that link in theshow notes.
And I know people are gonnawant to step beyond the free
tier and say, hey, okay, I wantto really take this to a
different level.
And you have that option aswell.
Ruheene Jaura (33:47):
Yeah, we have a couple of different plans, and
it really comes down to what uhwhat kind of a power user you
want to be.
So all the research that itdoes for you, all the search
terms that it'll help you find,yes, you can go plug that into
something like ChatGPT and orClaude, and you can get a lot of
runway out of it.
But if you really want thesystem to help you create
content using your expertise,using those search terms week
(34:08):
after week or month after month,which are the two different
plans, then yeah, and you wannaposition yourself on podcasts
and uh events and stages and getyour articles featured and
third-party publications thatyour audience is actively
reading.
That's the kind of stuff thatit will take you to.
It'll take you to that nextlevel and it'll do it on an
ongoing basis because we allknow that thought leadership
(34:28):
isn't born from one week's worthof content.
Dr. William Attaway (34:31):
That's so true.
So well said.
Rain, thank you so much foryour time today.
Ruheene Jaura (34:38):
Absolutely.
Thank you for having me.
This was a fun conversation,and I hope your your audience
got something out of it thatthey can apply immediately.
Dr. William Attaway (34:45):
I know they did.
I know I did.
Ruheene Jaura (34:47):
Awesome.
It is such an honor today to have Ruheen
Jara on the podcast as theco-founder of Hey Levi and a
brand new app called Brandify.
Ruheen has worked with some ofthe biggest brands known to
mankind, including Apple andAmazon.
Now she spends her timebuilding the same buyer
psychology processes that thesebig brands use into apps that
(00:24):
make them accessible andavailable to small businesses
across the globe.
Raheem, I'm so glad you'rehere.
Thanks for being on the show.
Ruheene Jaura (00:33):
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Intro (00:38):
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed
to help leaders intentionallygrow and thrive.
Here is your host, author, andleadership and executive coach,
Dr.
William Attaway.
Dr. William Attaway (00:55):
I'd love for you to share just a little
bit of your story with ourlisteners, particularly around
your journey and yourdevelopment as a leader.
How did you get started?
Ruheene Jaura (01:04):
It's interesting when you use the word leader
because I think a lot of peoplejust love that word.
Um and I think they're verycomfortable with that word.
I feel like I'm still growinginto that word and into that
role.
I feel like I'm alwayslearning.
I I never feel like I'mcompletely ahead of the pack.
So with that, I think a lot ofmy journey to what I'm doing
right now, which is, you know, Iwe just launched our second
(01:26):
software startup, um, has justbeen about figuring out how I
can help people.
I know that sounds veryoversimplified, and but really
it's always been about what isthe one thing that people are
struggling with that I that, youknow, so far, what all the all
the advice out there hasn'thelped.
And what is that thing that Icould maybe help solve based on
my experience and based on uh onmy background?
(01:48):
Um, and so very early on, ofcourse, when I was younger, that
wasn't the case.
Uh, I just wanted to get intothe movie business and uh be
glamorous and uh have my name upin the in movie credits.
And so that was my big goalwhen I was just starting out
with my career.
So I decided to get into themovie world, get into visual
effects, worked with companieslike Marvel for about eight
eight years, uh, got my name uhin the credits, so yay to me.
(02:10):
Um, I guess my name's in theAvengers, I invented a whole
bunch of things.
Um, I have an IMDB profile.
I always thought my kids wouldbe really impressed one day with
all of these stories.
They could not care less.
I am not a cool mom.
Dr. William Attaway (02:21):
Isn't that so true?
They don't care.
Ruheene Jaura (02:25):
Not at all.
They yeah, not not cool.
Nothing I could do could evermake me cool.
So I've tried to show them myIMDB profile, they could not
care less.
But that was my goal.
That's how that's how I startedreally doing those things.
And then from there, anyone whoknows me knows that I can't sit
still very long.
Um, I have to keep doing and Ihave to keep doing stuff.
Um, and so the movie world isvery, very hectic, and you get
(02:46):
really burnt out for like threeto five months, depending on the
size of the project.
And then you have a month ortwo of downtime, usually.
They're not usually back toback depending on the company
you're at.
And and the studio I was at, wedefinitely had a month or two
in between where things wouldreally slow down.
And so I was telling my bossesat the time, I was like, I can't
do this.
You need to start loaning meout.
So I got loaned out to anadvertising firm, local
(03:09):
advertising firm in SanFrancisco.
And that's how I started doinglaunch campaigns.
And so I got to be part of thelaunch campaign, actually lead
the launch campaign for theApple iPhone 5 back in 2012,
long time ago.
Uh, but a huge part of whatI've been able to bring with me
all these years and into what Ido now.
The Amazon Firephone in 2014did the a lot of failed
(03:31):
products, I will say, uh, morefailed products than I have
successful products.
But I think that is uh what hasmade me uniquely uh qualified
to talk about what works andalso equally what doesn't work.
So um so yeah, did a lot of uhbranding work, advertising work,
marketing, film, andstorytelling.
And I ended up combining all ofthat when I got into the
(03:52):
startup world and the smallbusiness world, because I
realized that a lot of smallbusinesses struggle with
positioning themselves.
It started out as, you know,helping them figure out how to
position their offers,understand the difference
between brand-led growth andproduct-led growth and sales-led
growth and all of these thingsthat a lot of people just get
thrown into and they have to nowfigure it out.
Um, and now, more recently, youknow, when I launched my first
(04:14):
startup, which is Hey Levi, uhwhen I first launched it, nobody
knew who I was, nobody caredwhat we had built, even though
it had it was something that wasvery much needed in the market.
Um, it was a positioning, itwas a branding and positioning
tool that didn't exist at thetime.
Now, of course, there are othertools that exist and do similar
things.
Uh, but at the time we were theonly ones that were approaching
it in this AI but no promptway.
(04:36):
Uh but nobody cared becausenobody knew who I was.
And no amount of telling peoplethat I worked with Apple and
Amazon mattered because thequestion is always, okay, that's
great, that's cool, but whatcan you do for me?
Right.
It it I mean, that's how welisten to That's so true.
And so that's how I realizedthat more than just developing
(04:58):
products and developingsolutions to market gaps that I
feel like I can help with, Irealized that what I needed to
focus on was positioning myselffirst.
And that led me on this journeyover the past year, year and a
half to building my personalbrand.
And I know a lot of people, alot of founders and creators,
but you know, mostly in ourworld as founders, to are trying
to get out there, build theirpersonal brand, establish
(05:22):
themselves as thought leaders intheir space, but nobody really
knows how to do it.
And the only advice that I'mhearing is keep posting on
social media and the algorithmwill take notice and you'll be
famous.
I'm exaggerating, obviously,but that's kind of just the
narrative that we're hearingover and over again.
And there I wish it were thateasy, right?
(05:42):
And my own journey, it has notbeen that easy.
I have tried posting a lot,posting a little, posting
somewhere in the middle, postingon different channels, and
honestly, just as a way of doingresearch.
And what I found is it doesn'tmatter.
Yes, if you post more times andyou're posting quality content,
I just got a message fromFacebook today that they've
increased my reach.
But what does that mean ifwe're not converting anyone?
Dr. William Attaway (06:03):
That's right.
That's right.
It's a vanity metric then, youknow?
Ruheene Jaura (06:07):
It is.
And so is engagement.
You know, a lot of people willsay, well, engagement shows
pre-conversions, but again,maybe, maybe not.
So, you know, reach is great,engagement is great, makes you
look really popular, makes youlook like you know what you're
doing.
But is it act only you knowwhether it's actually converting
into sales on the back end?
And for me, they weren't in alltransparency.
And so I realized that what Ireally needed to do was
(06:28):
understand my audience better,understand who I was serving,
what I was doing for them, whatmade me different from everybody
else who was talking aboutmaybe similar things or trying
to solve the same problems.
And a lot of that went intojust researching my audience,
understanding what they weresearching for, what they needed,
what they were listening to,what they were reading, just
understanding their whole world.
And so, yeah, that's uh that'sa long answer to your question,
(06:51):
but that's uh that's why I'mhere.
And that's why I'm sopassionate about talking about
personal branding even more thanbusiness branding at the
moment, and really helping CEOsand founders become social CEOs
so that their ideas don't gowasted.
Dr. William Attaway (07:05):
I think there's so much value in what
you're describing here, but itis something that a lot of
people misunderstand.
And I would count myself amongthem up until recently, having
heard you speak at a conferencewe were both at.
There's there's this confusion,particularly I think with
founders who want to build thebrand of what they're doing,
their business.
And, you know, we look at thethe big brands.
We've talked about, you know,Amazon and Apple and Marvel and
(07:27):
Disney, big brands that are thatare well known.
But a personal brand feels veryselfish, self-centered,
self-serving.
Like I want to build the brandof the thing, the product, the
service, not not my brand.
You talk about this and howthere's a better way to think
about that.
I'd love for you to share alittle bit about that, why it's
(07:47):
so important and why we need toget out of this mindset that
it's self-centered.
Ruheene Jaura (07:52):
Um so yeah, so a lot of people when you when they
hear branding, they're thinkingabout a company brand.
Um and I think at some pointthey're kind of mixing a little
bit of personal branding in anda little bit of business
branding in.
But it's really important tounderstand that they are and
should be separate.
And the reason I said I saythat is because, especially
because of my own experiencejust this year in 2025, um, we
(08:12):
went through nine months of anEcuhire uh deal, not really a
deal because it didn't gothrough in the end, uh, but a
conversation and a negotiation,right?
Um, and a lot of that reallymade like shed light on a lot of
things that I was kind ofpushing to aside and ignoring.
Um, you know, we've built astrong brand for Hay Levi.
And yes, I've been trying toposition myself as an expert to
(08:33):
bring more traffic into thebusiness, but I realized that
unless you have a strongbusiness brand that is
independent of you, it's harderto exit out of that business
because your face is now marriedto that business.
And a potential buyer orinvestor might question, well,
what if something happens to youor if you were to exit your
business, are we actually goingto continue, are we gonna be
(08:55):
able to continue growing it andscaling it?
So you want your business, ifyou, even if you're not thinking
about exiting your businesstoday, it's something that you
want to keep in mind becauseeven if you want to grow old
with it and take it with you,maybe one day you want to pass
it on to your to your kids or toyour family.
How do you do that when it'syour specific face that's that's
entrenched in the business?
So it's really important tothink about your business brand.
(09:17):
And all the big brands do it,right?
Think about Apple.
That's my one of my favoriteexamples because they've just
done it so well.
Apple has a really strongbrand.
Steve Jobs had a really strongbrand, but they were not the
same thing.
Steve Jobs exited, came back,got bought back in, like he
bought he built, you know, asoftware, got bought back into
Apple.
But through it all, Applecontinued to survive and thrive,
(09:38):
and it still has, even afterSteve Jobs is gone.
It's a different conversation,whether the quality of the
products is the same or not.
But you know, you know, thebrand has continued to grow,
right?
Um, and Steve Jobs had his ownpersonal brand.
You loved him or you hated him,but you couldn't ignore him.
And and nobody could claim thatthey had done what he had done
because he people knew who hewas.
And again, he was a knownpersonal brand.
(10:00):
So all that to say it's reallyimportant for your company
brand, for your business brandto have a brand of its own.
But it's also equally importantfor you to have your own
personal brand because let's sayyou do exit out of your
business and you want to dosomething else.
You're gonna be starting fromscratch if your entire brand
weren't with your company andnow nobody knows who you are.
Everybody knows your company,but now nobody knows who you
are.
So whatever you do next,whether you know you're working
(10:22):
for a larger company and youwanna go open your own thing or
you want to get a different job,or you're in a startup and you
want to start up maybe somethingelse in that parallel or after
this one.
Doesn't matter what you want todo, as long as you have your
personal brand, that's gonna gowith you.
Startup to startup, roll uproll to roll, it it travels with
you.
Dr. William Attaway (10:39):
That's fascinating.
I'm thinking of of differentexamples.
Steve's Steve Jobs is a greatone.
Think about Walt Disney.
Here's a guy who started abusiness that grew into what is
now an empire, really, allaround his name.
Right?
He was the center of the spiderweb, everything connected to
him.
But when he died, the businessdidn't fall apart.
Ruheene Jaura (10:58):
Exactly.
Dr. William Attaway (10:59):
You know, they had to change, to be sure.
How would you look at that?
Like, was he building apersonal brand in addition to
the business, or was it reallyall about the business and was
he over-identified with thebusiness?
Ruheene Jaura (11:17):
I don't think you can separate him from Disney.
I I mean, at least I can't.
Maybe I'm I'm now thinking, doI know of anything that he has
said which is not related to thebusiness directly?
Dr. William Attaway (11:27):
Right.
Exactly.
Ruheene Jaura (11:34):
Um Walt Disney ever said, and maybe that was
before my time, but yeah.
Dr. William Attaway (11:38):
Yeah, and so I'm thinking, like, do
founders fall into that trapoften where they are just
completely, completelyover-identified with the
business.
They are at the center ofeverything.
And then it becomes unsellable,like you're describing, because
you can't sell yourself.
Yes.
You know?
How do you see that more often?
Ruheene Jaura (11:57):
I see that a lot, and it's a little bit scary
because if that's yourintention, then that's fine as
long as you have a clear goal inmind and you're doing it
intentionally.
What I find scary is is talkingto founders and CEOs who don't
realize what they're doing.
They realize they've heard theterm branding.
They know that they need astrong brand, but they don't
really know what that means.
(12:17):
Just this week, I was on a callwith a longtime customer of uh
Hay Levi, and he was telling methat he just signed up for
Brandify, but he also a monthago signed up with um a branding
expert.
Um, and so I thought it wasinteresting because I asked him,
like, what is what is thisbranding expert doing for you
exactly?
What kind of branding?
Um, and he was like, Well,she's doing my logo and colors,
(12:38):
and but then also my messaging.
And then she's also positioningme as a thought leader.
So I was like, that sounds likea big mix of a lot of different
things that shouldn'tnecessarily be mixed together.
And if this is her like singlepackage, I'm sure she knows what
she's doing.
I'm this isn't I'm not tryingto throw shade to anybody, but
what worries me is that foundersare looking for branding
(12:59):
experts, going with somebody whois like, oh, I'll do all the
branding for you.
Um, and then giving themsomething where their personal
brand is just now completelymuddied up with their business
brand.
And now you can't differentiatebetween the two and they don't
know any better.
Dr. William Attaway (13:13):
I think that language is perfect,
muddied up.
That's exactly it's just all abig mud pile.
And how do you separate mud?
You know, once the dirt and thewater mix, you're never gonna
separate them again.
That is so often the branding.
So let's say one of ourlisteners is like, okay, I wanna
I want to start this personalbrand thing.
(13:33):
I need to do this.
It has been muddy, it's been,it's been all like put together.
How do I begin?
Where do I start?
What would you say?
Ruheene Jaura (13:43):
I think the first thing you want to think about
is that when you're buildingyour business brand, want, I
mean, both both brands are areall about earning your ideal
customers' trust.
At the end of the day, that'sreally what it comes down to.
I think on a on a businessbrand level, you really want to
think about how that trustconverts into sales, right?
It's not a hobby, it's abusiness.
You want to make sure thateverything that you're doing for
(14:05):
your business is convertinginto some sort of revenue for
your business so you can keepthe lights on, right?
And continue to scale.
With you as a personal brand,you want to think less about how
you're gonna immediatelyconvert that into sales.
And you wanna think about howdo you stay top of mind, you as
a person, not your company, butyou.
So if I have Hey Levi, I haveBrandify now.
(14:26):
Brandify does personalbranding, Hey Levi does business
branding.
That's the difference betweenthe two.
And then there's me, Raheen,right?
And really what I want peopleto think about is hey, I need I
have a branding problem.
My personal brand, like I needa system that's gonna help me
scale my business brand,establish me as a thought
leader, get me featured onpodcasts like this one, on the
right stages, you know, atevents that my customers are
(14:48):
going to.
I need a system that's gonna dothat and I'm willing to spend
money on it.
Well, I want them to think ofBrandify, right, as a platform.
But let's say they have aquestion and they're not really
sure.
They know they need a brand,they know they they're kind of
stuck in their business, theywant to scale, they're not sure
if they should be speaking onstages or not, they're not sure
what they should be doing.
There's so many differentthings that they're being told,
and now they don't know what todo next.
(15:08):
They really just need someoneto clarify it for them.
At that point, I want them tothink of me, right?
So I want to be the expert, ifyou will, that comes to mind
when you have a question aboutbrand-led growth, product-led
growth, how the two can work foryour business.
What does branding mean?
What is the difference betweenbusiness branding and personal
(15:29):
branding?
At what point of my journeyshould I focus on one versus the
other?
Those kinds of things you don'tnecessarily want to spend money
just to get an answer, but youwant somebody who you feel like
is in your corner who will helpyou navigate that and figure out
what you need to do next.
Dr. William Attaway (15:42):
And that's the expertise of a professional,
somebody who's got the track,who's got the experience, who
can speak using that languageand that that knowledge base and
bring it to bear for thequestions and the challenges
that you're facing.
And I love that you havestepped into that space for
yourself and said, hey, this iswho I want to be.
So when you made that decision,what were some of the things
(16:06):
that you began to dodifferently?
Ruheene Jaura (16:08):
So that's where this whole journey started,
right?
I realized that just simply,you know, telling people about
this amazing product I had builtthat was going to solve all of
their branding problems wasn'tactually going to do it.
Um, and so I really had to digdeep to understand, first of
all, like understanding what ismy who is my audience, right?
Like who am I really targeting?
It can't be like all foundersacross the world for every
(16:29):
company.
It was, you know, who am Ireally speaking to?
Who can I who who do I have theability to help?
Right?
I don't have any experience ine-commerce, for example.
So if you have an e-commerbusiness, I could tell you about
business branding and personalbranding.
I can help you build yourthought leadership.
But when it comes to reallydoing product led versus brand
led sales for your business, Imay not be the best person.
(16:52):
But if you're a tech founder,if you are a SaaS founder, if
you're in the software space,then I can help you because that
is my experience.
So yeah.
So so one part of it is justunderstanding who am I really
talking to, who am I speakingto, who can I help really help,
and who do I want to be helping?
The next thing isunderstanding, not just, you
(17:12):
know, a lot of people will say,well, this is my audience, this
is the demographics, these aretheir pain points, and so this
is my solution.
Right?
That's the customer journey.
But there's so much more thatgoes into it because what are
they really buying when they buyfrom you?
What are they really lookingfor when they come and see you
at a conference and they want tohave a conversation with you?
There's a lot of nuances, andyou really need to understand
(17:35):
what it is that they're lookingfor.
How can you really serve themin a meaningful way?
And to understand that, itreally comes down to
understanding what is keepingthem up at night, what are they
searching for?
What are they looking for?
Where are they looking forthese answers?
Dr. William Attaway (17:48):
And this goes back to the buyer
psychology processes.
You're really trying to getinside their head and trying to
think how and trying to discoverhow they think so that you can
intersect their problem with thesolution that you can bring so
that you can serve them.
Ruheene Jaura (18:04):
Exactly.
Dr. William Attaway (18:04):
But understanding the question, the
right question is essential tobeing able to provide the right
answer.
Ruheene Jaura (18:09):
Yes, exactly.
And again, what you justtouched on is a little bit of
both things.
So from your business brand,you want to be thinking about
what their decision-makingjourney looks like?
What is what do they base theirdecisions on?
Dr. William Attaway (18:21):
Right?
Ruheene Jaura (18:22):
Understanding that, really diving deep into
their what people callpsychographics, but I think it's
so much deeper than justpsychographics.
It's really understanding whothey are as a person, what
drives them to, what motivatesthem to make decisions.
That's what you want tounderstand at the business brand
level, because you want tounderstand A, is this person the
right fit for to be a customerfor what you can offer?
And B, what's going to helpthem, what's going to help them
(18:44):
make the next step and buy fromyou.
But in a business, you know,when you're speaking to somebody
at an event, for example, Idon't just start talking about,
hey, Levi and Brandify.
I'm talking about, I'm I'mwaiting to see what their
question is about where they'restruggling in their business,
where they're struggling intheir own positioning and
thought leadership.
So I can help answer questionsfor them and I can be of service
to them because that way I'mgoing to be top of mind next
(19:07):
time they think about a questionlike this, or their their
friend has this problem, ortheir business partner has this
problem.
They're like, hey, you know,Raheem really helped me.
You should go talk to her.
That's a little, a littledifferentiator between they're
aligned.
What your business does andwhat you do is probably aligned,
but they need to be rated andthe goal is different.
Dr. William Attaway (19:27):
I love that mindset and that perspective
that you begin, you lead off byserving.
You lead off by saying, How canI help?
instead of, hey, here's mything.
Do you want to buy it?
Which is where I think so manyentrepreneurs mess up.
Yes.
They start with a big askinstead of starting by serving.
And I love that you broughtthat out.
I think that's something that Ihope every listener who's
(19:47):
hearing this is jotting down asa growth area because I think
it's a growth area for every oneof us.
So you've launched Brandify,brand new.
Tell us a little bit about it.
Like what is it, what is it,how does it intersect this
problem?
How can people jump into this?
And and what is this, what doyou see this doing in the
markets, particularly the smallbusiness market?
Ruheene Jaura (20:10):
Yeah.
And so I like that you askedspecifically about the small
business market becausesomething that me and and my
co-founder, who's also myhusband, we've both worked with,
and in his case, for largercompanies like Apple and Amazon.
And one thing that we had incommon, and the reason why we we
feel so passionately about whatwe do and what we create
together, is we've always lookedat how these bigger brands do
things.
(20:30):
And our brains have always goneto well, how do we democratize
this and how do we bring this tomore people who don't have
those resources and the bigbudget that these big companies
do?
Um, you know, because they makeit look so easy.
They make growth look so easy,they make branding look so easy.
Like, how how can you replicatethat and bring those tools and
frameworks to small businesses?
And so that's what we did withHey Levi.
We really did it's a businessbranding tool that helps you
(20:53):
really dig deep into yourcustomer avatars and validate
your offers and build a brandlevel presence for your
business.
Um, and then of course do allthe copywriting and content that
comes with it.
Something that we shifted ourfocus to this year, like I said,
is personal branding.
And we realized that it's awhole, it's a it's a very
different shift, right?
You can't just apply the samethings to your personal brand
because we saw a lot of peopleactually signing up for Hailey
(21:14):
Vi and trying to create contentthat would position themselves
as a thought leader.
And we realized it wasn't gonnawork that way because it's the
frameworks you use are verydifferent.
The approach you use is verydifferent.
And so when we really startedto pull apart like what has
worked for me over this pastyear and a half, I'm still a
growing personal brand.
I'm definitely not where I wantto be.
I'm still very, like very muchmidway, I would say, to where I
(21:35):
want to be.
But a lot of what has worked isjust spending the time on
research.
Now with AI, AI is, you know,this magical tool that will do
everything for you.
And I see a lot of people justjumping into ChatGPT and saying,
This is what I do, this is whoI do it for, write me my next 30
days of content.
Right?
Dr. William Attaway (21:53):
Poof, there it is.
Ruheene Jaura (21:55):
And I see, and it and it, it, it bothers me
because I feel like people areget being fed this narrative,
this promise that, hey, just askChatGPT and you'll you can have
30 days of content, and now youcan post three times a day,
five times a day, ten times aday, and the algorithms will
love you, you'll you'll furtheryour reach and you're done.
Except that's exactly whateverybody else in your industry
is doing too.
(22:16):
That's right.
So unless there's somethingdifferent about what you're
doing or what you're tellingChatGPT, which there may be
because your story is differentfrom somebody else's, but most
people are not focusing on whatthat differentiation factor,
right?
They're they're just saying,This is my expertise, this is
who I help write me compellinglanguage.
And so, yeah, it's like if youput that in your prompt, it's
(22:36):
suddenly gonna be verycompelling.
But again, that's what everyoneelse is doing.
And so how do you really standout?
You're not gonna be top of mindif you're just doing what
everybody else is doing.
Again, the algorithm might loveyou, that might be true.
You might increase your reach.
I just increased my reachtoday, and I don't even post
every day, by the way.
But but the the important partis are you attracting the right
kind of people?
Are the right kind of peopleseeing your message?
(22:56):
And are they reaching out toyou to have conversations?
And I can say yes.
Ever since I was I startedbecoming really, really mindful
about making sure that my post,my content is about what I I
know I can help people with, andnot just putting something up
there for the sake of putting itup there, um, just for the to
have my, you know, have thealgorithm be happy with me.
I notice that I I may not onthe front of it, I don't have
(23:19):
like, I have a couple of, Idon't know, like a couple of
million followers on Facebook,but like not like a like 10
million like a lot of peoplehave.
So it's not huge and my reachis still growing.
But I have the right people inmy DMs asking me to have
conversations with them.
I'm having really good Zoomconversations, I'm converting
people on a very regular basis.
We're just one week intoBrandify, and we already have
(23:41):
um, I don't want to share itsspecific numbers here, but like
we already have or a much largergroup than I was expecting of
early adopters on the on theplatform.
So I know that my content isdoing its job.
And so um to answer yourquestion of like how, um, it's
really about understanding thatAI can do much more than just
write your content for you.
Right?
(24:02):
I talk about research.
AI has the capability of doingdeeper research than you, that
than you as a human could bedoing.
I don't know if deep researchis a term that most people are
familiar with, but um, for thosethat aren't, um, deep research
simply means looking at all theavailable resources on the
internet to to pull them alltogether and to see what the
(24:24):
actual answer to something is.
What we do is we'll go toGoogle or ChatGPT now and ask a
question.
It'll pull up some five to tenresources that we'll maybe skim
over, pick one that we like, andgo with it.
But that's not deep research,right?
That's not scouring tens ofthousands and hundreds of
thousands of articles to reallygather the information that you
need so you have a fuller,bigger picture of what you need
(24:46):
to understand about youraudience.
And so that's what Brandifydoes.
It really helps you, it does alot of deep research.
It has multiple agents thatwill go out, do their deep
research on your audience, helpyou understand who they are,
what kind of content they'reconsuming, what are their search
terms every single week, whichevents are they going to, which
podcasts are they listening to,what third-party blog sites are
they reading, and how you canfeature yourself on in each of
(25:08):
these places.
Dr. William Attaway (25:11):
That is so powerful.
I love that distinction of deepresearch.
You know, when I was working onmy dissertation, I mean,
reading hundreds of articles andbooks and you know, diving so
deep to have a tool like what wehave at our disposal with AI
back in those days would havebeen astounding.
Ruheene Jaura (25:30):
Exactly.
Dr. William Attaway (25:30):
What you're doing is is leveraging that
power for the benefit of a smallbusiness who probably doesn't
have the the deep pockets thatthe larger ones do.
You're gonna help them to buildthis brand in a powerful way.
I can't wait to see where thisgoes.
I think this is gonna beamazing.
I mean I know we're very earlyin the journey, yes, but in a
(25:53):
little bit we're gonna talkabout how our listeners can jump
into this, how they can engage.
Before we do that, though, Iwant to talk about you for just
a minute.
You are having to lead yourcompanies now at a higher level
than you did just a few yearsago.
More is demanded of you, andthree, four, five years from
now, more will be demanded yet.
How do you level up as aleader?
(26:15):
How do you make sure that youare keeping your shaw as sharp
as possible so that you can meetthe demands of your team, your
clients, and the businesses thatyou lead?
Ruheene Jaura (26:27):
Yeah, it's a great question, and probably one
that I'd be able to answer muchbetter when I'm not one week
into a software launch, I willsay it.
Dr. William Attaway (26:35):
Fair enough.
Ruheene Jaura (26:36):
Probably not my best self right now, but with
that, I think in general it justcomes down to making sure that
you never stop talking topeople.
I think one of the reasons whymy team has faith in me, and
I've um I'm super grateful andhumbled to have a team where
both me and my husband have beentold that they don't care where
we go or what company we'restarting, they just want to go
(26:58):
with us because they know it'sgonna be a good ride.
That is extremely meaningful,and and we don't take that
lightly at all.
And so I think so good.
Yeah, and it's interesting thatyou're asking this question
because it made me think aboutwell, we're doing something
right, but what is that?
What are we doing right so wecan do more of it?
Um, and I think it comes downto how do you handle difficult
(27:18):
situations?
How do you handle uh stressfulsituations?
I mean, for those of you thatare doing software, you know
that there are bumps on the roadand they never stop.
You know, when you're launchinga new product or service or
software, uh, in our case, thereare a lot of things that will
go wrong right at the lastminute.
How do you handle that?
Or when you have think it'sgonna, you're gonna do something
(27:40):
and then there's a curveball oryou know, somebody may have,
you know, may have promised yousomething and isn't able to
deliver on that.
Like, how do you continue on?
Who do you blame?
It's so easy for us to be like,well, it happened because you
failed on this, right?
And so I think really makingsure that no matter how tired
and stressed you are, you'realways grounded in reality.
(28:00):
That grounding in reality meansthat these things are bound to
happen.
Lame it is not the way to go.
It's really understanding wherewe failed, what we can do next
to make sure we don't feel likethat again, and what impact has
it really had to our businessand what does that mean for us
next?
What do we need to do next?
Right.
I think and a lot of that justcomes again from me talking to
(28:21):
customers.
That's a part of my job that Iwill never give up is just
talking to people to reallyunderstand where are we meeting
their expectations so that whensomething goes wrong, you know
that you're still solving a veryreal problem for very real
people and you know the impactit's having, and that's what you
take back to your team.
Those are the stories you tellyour team.
Dr. William Attaway (28:39):
That's so good.
I love the the evaluativeaspect of that, how you are
asking the right questions sothat you grow and you get
better.
I think that's so, so importantin the life of every leader.
Love that you're doing that.
And I think your team'sresponse that wherever you guys
go, we want to go, that speaksvolumes to y'all as leaders.
(29:00):
Way to go.
Ruheene Jaura (29:02):
It's huge.
And we we carry that with usand we remind ourselves and each
other.
My husband and I remind eachother of that when things go get
hard.
Dr. William Attaway (29:09):
Is there a book that has made a really big
difference in your journey thatyou would recommend to the
leaders who are listening?
Ruheene Jaura (29:15):
Yeah, there are actually quite a few books, but
the one book that comes to mindspecifically for the way I
handle business, and again, thisis very specific, not really
myself, but business, is a bookcalled Working Backwards.
It's actually modeled on Amazonand how Amazon came to be and
how their culture came to be.
Um and it's been one of thosebooks.
There aren't a lot of books onmy bookshelf that I keep going
(29:35):
back to.
There are a lot of books on mybookshelf that I mean to keep
going back to.
Dr. William Attaway (29:40):
That's good.
Ruheene Jaura (29:42):
Probably only one or two books that I actually
find myself bookmarking andgoing back to and looking for
those pages over and over again.
Um, and working backwards wouldbe that one book that I go back
to very, very often.
Dr. William Attaway (29:53):
I've not read this and now I'm going to,
but thank you for that.
Ruheene Jaura (29:56):
Yeah, yeah, check it out.
Dr. William Attaway (29:58):
So, last question.
You know, people, people lookat you and they think, oh my
goodness, what a rocket ride ofa journey.
You know, hearing your storyfrom Hollywood to the companies
that you run now, I mean, mygoodness, your journey's just
been up and to the right.
You m you you don't have any ofthe same challenges I deal
with.
You don't struggle like I do asa business owner.
(30:20):
And of course, we know that'ssilly.
You know, we can't look atsomebody's highlight reel and
think it tells the whole story.
So in light of that, I want toask you this.
If I had the ability to snap myfingers and solve one problem
in your business right now, whatwould you like that problem to
be?
Ruheene Jaura (30:38):
I think it would be like we just launched a new
software, and I think it wouldbe if you could fast forward the
next three years for us so thatwe don't have to go through all
the painful growth phase.
That would be what you what Iwould you felt that's a big ask.
That's to say that I don't havebad days or bad times.
(31:00):
I have bad years and they don'tstop.
As long as you're growing,you're doing difficult things,
and it just depends.
It all comes down to whatyou're focusing on.
Um and again, it those are thedays the way you remind yourself
of who are you helping.
And if you know that you'reactually making a difference in
somebody else's life, it helpsyou push through.
And so good.
I'm not gonna lie.
I mean, yes, I talk about Appleand Amazon, all these big
(31:21):
brands, but like I said, nobodycared when I was done with that
and I wanted to start my ownthing.
Nobody cared about that.
That didn't make customers comeknocking at my door saying, Can
I buy your thing?
Because you worked at Apple andAmazon.
Dr. William Attaway (31:34):
Right.
Ruheene Jaura (31:35):
You know, like nobody cared.
And so to for me to reallyaccept that and accept that I
was a nobody when I when Istarted getting into the the
small business worlds and thestartup worlds, I was a nobody.
Nobody cared about me, nobodycared about what I had to say.
Accepting that and thenfiguring out how to get past
that, how to grow past that hasnot been easy.
I'm still struggling throughit.
I'm still only halfway there,like I said.
(31:56):
So I have lots of hard days,lots of hard weeks and months
and years.
Dr. William Attaway (32:02):
So appreciate your transparency.
You're spot on.
People don't care about whatyou used to do.
You know?
Uh I've said for a long time,people's favorite radio station
is W-I-I-F-M.
What's in it for me?
You know?
And that's what we listen to,most of us.
Ruheene Jaura (32:19):
Yeah, I mean, if you've been in marketing, you've
heard this, right?
Like everything you talk about,it's like, so what?
Dr. William Attaway (32:24):
So what?
Ruheene Jaura (32:25):
So what?
Because that's what youraudience is thinking.
So what?
Dr. William Attaway (32:28):
That's right.
That's so true.
Reena, I just want to thank youfor your generosity today, of
your time and of thetransparency you've brought into
this conversation about yourjourney, things you've learned
so far on that journey.
I know our listeners are goingto want to stay connected to you
and learn more about Brandify.
What is the best way for themto do that?
Ruheene Jaura (32:49):
The best way would be to just check out the
software.
We have a free tier that itdoes for free.
It will take your story, itwill go run the agents for you,
it will do the deep research onyour audience, tell you what
they're searching for this week,where they're hanging out, what
kind of uh content they'reconsuming.
And also how your story fillsin some of the market gaps for
those search terms and whatthey're looking for, how you can
(33:12):
position yourself, how you cantell your story.
It will do all of that forfree.
Just yeah, just uh get all thevalue that you can out of it.
So um the website isbrandif.ai.
Um and I'm gonna say that onemore time because we call it
brandify because of the AI atthe end.
Unfortunately, we've had a lotof people go to brandify with a
why, and that is not our domain.
(33:32):
Brandif.ai.
Dr. William Attaway (33:36):
So good.
We'll have that link in theshow notes.
And I know people are gonnawant to step beyond the free
tier and say, hey, okay, I wantto really take this to a
different level.
And you have that option aswell.
Ruheene Jaura (33:47):
Yeah, we have a couple of different plans, and
it really comes down to what uhwhat kind of a power user you
want to be.
So all the research that itdoes for you, all the search
terms that it'll help you find,yes, you can go plug that into
something like ChatGPT and orClaude, and you can get a lot of
runway out of it.
But if you really want thesystem to help you create
content using your expertise,using those search terms week
(34:08):
after week or month after month,which are the two different
plans, then yeah, and you wannaposition yourself on podcasts
and uh events and stages and getyour articles featured and
third-party publications thatyour audience is actively
reading.
That's the kind of stuff thatit will take you to.
It'll take you to that nextlevel and it'll do it on an
ongoing basis because we allknow that thought leadership
(34:28):
isn't born from one week's worthof content.
Dr. William Attaway (34:31):
That's so true.
So well said.
Rain, thank you so much foryour time today.
Ruheene Jaura (34:38):
Absolutely.
Thank you for having me.
This was a fun conversation,and I hope your your audience
got something out of it thatthey can apply immediately.
Dr. William Attaway (34:45):
I know they did.
I know I did.
Ruheene Jaura (34:47):
Awesome.
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