Jul 19, 2026 · 39 min · 10 segments
Audrey Neff sits down with branding strategist, media executive, and author **Leslie Tracy**, founder of Diamond Hands Media and author of *Be Intentional or Be Irrelevant*, to unpack one of the most…
Leslie TracyGuest
Audrey NeffHost
But if we kind of back up and start from the top, And talk about the overall concept of branding.
I think people get confused with what is a brand? What is branding? And getting super hyper-focused on a website or a logo or a color scheme and things like that.
Brand is how you wanna show up in the world, but essentially underneath it all is what your belief system is.
Because if you have, and I know you and I have talked about this before, but when you have your values, your mission, how you want to be known in the world, and I like to say, I always think in 10-year tranches, when you think so long-term about what you wanna be known for, then everything else hinges on that.
how you hire, which is also a brand process, how you even terminate someone is even a brand process because all of this is internal speak.
So I really, so one of our like mottos is like, we call it excavation before creation.
We start with who are you and how did you get here? And how does who you are affect how you may run this business? And again, and I have to separate it into two because when you work with executives of companies, it's completely different than if we're working with a person who's going to be starting a practice or who has had a practice for a while, because those are two different things.
Because when we're working with an executive, it's more like, who are you that has not been codified yet on paper? All your team members know it.
You have a great reputation for it, but How I haven't put that into a codified story.
How is this going to affect what you're about to build or that you're going to continue building? Because they're two separate mentalities.
So a brand starts with the leader or the founder, the one that truly is responsible for everything below them within the practice or the business.
And so how would you connect? What are signs that a business confuses marketing and branding with leadership and maybe that they actually don't think that they're totally connected?
But if we kind of back up and start from the top, And talk about the overall concept of branding.
I think people get confused with what is a brand? What is branding? And getting super hyper-focused on a website or a logo or a color scheme and things like that.
Brand is how you wanna show up in the world, but essentially underneath it all is what your belief system is.
Because if you have, and I know you and I have talked about this before, but when you have your values, your mission, how you want to be known in the world, and I like to say, I always think in 10-year tranches, when you think so long-term about what you wanna be known for, then everything else hinges on that.
how you hire, which is also a brand process, how you even terminate someone is even a brand process because all of this is internal speak.
So I really, so one of our like mottos is like, we call it excavation before creation.
We start with who are you and how did you get here? And how does who you are affect how you may run this business? And again, and I have to separate it into two because when you work with executives of companies, it's completely different than if we're working with a person who's going to be starting a practice or who has had a practice for a while, because those are two different things.
Because when we're working with an executive, it's more like, who are you that has not been codified yet on paper? All your team members know it.
You have a great reputation for it, but How I haven't put that into a codified story.
How is this going to affect what you're about to build or that you're going to continue building? Because they're two separate mentalities.
So a brand starts with the leader or the founder, the one that truly is responsible for everything below them within the practice or the business.
And so how would you connect? What are signs that a business confuses marketing and branding with leadership and maybe that they actually don't think that they're totally connected?
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