You have 0-7 seconds. In that time, three subconscious questions get answered:

"Can I trust this?"

"Is this for me?"

"Is it worth it?"

Obviously in this time, your clients are not consciously analyzing your logo. But they are feeling their way to their answers to these three questions.

Today I'm breaking down the three elements that actually drive the feelings in your first impression, and uncovering what makes buying obvious or creates instant resistance instead. And why most brands are accidentally creating discord instead of harmony.

You'll discover:

• Why color discord happens even when your brand colors are "right"
• The personality type mistake that makes premium pricing feel "too expensive"
• How imagery can undermine credibility before anyone reads a word
• Why sophisticated visuals with uncertain copy kills conversions
• The three-question harmony audit to check your own brand
• How to fix the biggest gap without rebuilding everything

Listen if:

• You've invested in beautiful branding but conversions aren't improving
• People say "you're too expensive"
• Your brand feels "off" but you can't figure out why
• You're getting mixed signals about your positioning
• You want clarity on what actually moves the needle

• Free quiz: Discover your brand personality type: https://go.jnicholesmith.com/quiz
• Waitlist: 48 hr brand refresh program: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/weekend-waitlist

This week's challenge: Do the three-question audit. Be honest about gaps. Pick ONE element to fix first.

Because once you see harmony in action, you can't unsee it. And that awareness will transform everything.

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From ancient Greek mythology to Marvel movies. From Shakespeare to Star Wars. The same patterns keep showing up because they're wired into human psychology.

And when your brand taps into these universal patterns, you're not just creating marketing. You're activating something that bypasses conscious thought and goes straight to emotion, memory, and identity.

And if you’ve been in my world a while, then you know just how important emotion is when it comes to building a successful business. It’s not ‘nice to have’ - it needs to be the core of your brand and all your marketing.

Today, after many many requests for this episode, I'm breaking down the twelve Jungian archetypes and why they're one of the most powerful strategic tools you can use to create instant recognition, deep connection, and fierce brand loyalty.

But here's what most people get wrong: They pick an archetype based on what sounds cool and end up with a stereotype instead of a strategy. The secret is understanding the four core motivations underneath the twelve archetypes. That's what transforms this from marketing gimmick into psychological strategy that runs all the way the way from your reels to your company’s vacation policies.

You'll discover why brands with tight archetypal clarity grow 97% more than confused brands, how Founders like Richard Branson manage to infuse their archetypes across over 400 companies worldwide.

• The Four Core Motivations:
• The Four Core psychological Motivations driving all archetypes
• Jung’s 12 Core Archetypes with Brand Examples
• The difference between founder archetype, brand archetype, and product archetype
• Why combining primary and secondary archetypes creates depth
• Warning signs of archetypal dissonance and which archetypes and personality types clash (and what to do about it)
• How to translate archetypes into voice, visuals, and customer experience
• Creating an archetypal strategy document for consistency

• "The Hero and the Outlaw" by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson
• Nic’s Color Brand Quiz: https://go.jnicholesmith.com/quiz
• Get on the waitlist for our new course to build your brand with archetypes: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/weekend-waitlist

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When you spend hours researching the perfect font pairing over and over again, you're not actually working on your business. You're avoiding something scarier.

This is what I call 'procrastibranding'. And if you just felt called out, stay with me. Because I'm not here to shame you. I'm here to help you understand what's actually happening and how to break the cycle.

Today I'm breaking down why brand work feels so productive when it's actually sophisticated procrastination, what it's really costing you in money and opportunity, and the practical framework for finally committing to your brand and focusing on what actually generates revenue.

You'll discover the three psychological drivers of procrastibranding, why "good enough" often outperforms "perfect" in today's market, and the one question that changes everything. Plus...

• The three warning signs you're caught in procrastibranding (and which one is keeping you stuck)
• Why repetitive creative work feels productive but what it's costing you
• The hidden costs nobody talks about
• How inconsistency kills word-of-mouth (your most powerful free marketing)
• Why imperfect authenticity builds more trust than sterile perfection right now
• Which 20% of branding actually moves the needle
• My "good enough" checklist: four boxes to check before you launch
• When a rebrand IS worth the investment (and when it's not)
• Five practical strategies to break the procrastibranding cycle

• Free Brand Personality Quiz: https://go.jnicholesmith.com/quiz
• Joy First World: https://joyfirstworld.com/
• Book a Brand Breakthrough Call: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/branding
• Joy First Founders' Circle community: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/jffc

The truth? Your ideal clients aren't waiting for your logo to be perfect: They're waiting for you to show up and help them.

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Picture this: A room full of 5 yr olds listening to 'Golden' - when that three-part harmony hits... their little faces lit up - they could feel the harmony (and I got about 1000 cool points from my kids for being the mum who not only came in for career day, but managed to work KPop Demon Hunters into my presentation about Colour Psychology)

If your visual brand is as on-point right now as the Huntr/x high-notes - customers are doing the exact same thing as those kids. They're lighting up in your funnels, on your website and in your social feeds.

But how do you know if you're peddling visual harmony or discord?

In today's episode, I'm breaking down why some brands make you feel instant trust while others make you want to close the tab (even though you probably can't quite explain why).

• The neuroscience of how your brain processes visual harmony (and why your brand should care)
• What Gordon Ramsay and fine dining can teach us about brand consistency
• The five elements I adjust most often in Design Time hot seats (and how to audit yours)
• Why mixing colour groups creates the same discomfort as notes out of tune
• How to identify visual discord in your brand using the "scramble test"
• Real metrics: why harmonious brands show higher conversions, longer time on site, and better word-of-mouth
• The biggest harmony pitfalls facing most Founders, and how to fix them

LINKS FROM TODAY:

• Starling Bank rebrand analysis: https://www.tiktok.com/@joyfirstworld/video/7550797369546198294
• Free Brand Personality Quiz: https://go.jnicholesmith.com/quiz
• Book a Call to talk about your rebrand: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/branding
• DM me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jnicholesmith

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Picture this: I'm VP of brand at a tech startup, locked in a battle with our UI/UX designer over whether our app's greys should be warm or cold. She's insisting on blue-based greys: Apple does it, all the big tech brands do it, so obviously it's correct for technology, right? Wrong.

And today I'm going to de-code for you why this seemingly insignificant detail reveals everything you need to know about colour psychology.

• What happens in your mind with colour before your cognitive mind analyzes anything
• The four groups of colour and how they correlate with personality types (with the exact science behind it)
• How to choose colours strategically based on psychology, not just preference
• Why certain colour combinations create delicious harmony while others trigger instant distrust
• The critical questions to ask before choosing any colour for your brand
• Real examples of brands getting colour psychology right (and catastrophically wrong)
• Why it's so important to stick to colours from one 'group' to get the results you want with your brand
• The psychology behind every major colour from brown to pink (including which one to avoid entirely)

• Free Brand Personality Quiz: go.jnicholesmith.com/quiz
• Tara Lynn & Co. photography (sunshine brand example)
• Janna Scharfenberg website (seaside brand example)
• The Ad Girls rebrand: theadgirls.com (fireside brand example)
• Natalie MacNeil website: nataliemacneil.com (fireside brand example)
• Dr. Romie Mushtaq - Busy Brain Cure book
• Starling Bank rebrand breakdown (mentioned)
• Dealing with Whiteness podcast series (previous season)
• Color psychology resources and tools
• Book a strategy call with Nic
• Super Bloom program information
• Color Joy program

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As a serial entrepreneur as well as a branding expert, I've always had extremely high standards for how, where and when brand is worth investing in... and extremely high expectations for the kind of return I want to see on that investment.

I've always bent over backwards to create this for my clients - but it always felt like 're-inventing the wheel' each time... a long, painful process for me and them, that always resulted in something fantastic, but often no one could really explain why it was great, or how we got there. As someone who loves science, systems and repeatable successes, that was never good enough for me.

When I did a Masters in Marketing I thought for sure I'd find the missing link, the secret, the guarantee. But no. It wasn't until I got certified in Applied Colour Psychology that I found the answer, the key to creating visuals with more predictable impact on behavior...

What if I told you that your brand, just like you, has a personality? A frequency. And what if there was a predictable, repeatable, profound framework for you to understand and lean-in to that personality and get better results in every metric that matters to your business?

Today I'm sharing the breakthrough that transformed how I build brands and why it might be exactly what you've been searching for. We're diving into the psychology behind brand personalities. I'll introduce you to the four personalities and show you how when you find yours, and build your brand in exclusively that vibe, you can create more solid and predictable emotional responses in your customer (which as you know, is the key to driving purchase).

You'll discover how to reveal your brand's natural frequency, learn why trying to force a personality that isn't authentic or aligned creates problems (and how to fix it), and you'll hear how to audit your current branding for psychological consistency.

• Daily Mail Article Quoting me about Ellen DeGeneres' Farmhouse
• Starling Bank's Rebrand: Long Version | Short Version
• Joy First Founder's Circle
• Colour Brand® Colour Psychology Method overview
• Personality Type Quiz
• Joy First® Brand Assessment
• Super Bloom® branding client case studies

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Twenty minutes. That's all it took for me to go from casual observer to completely bought-in advocate of a brand I'd barely heard of before. No pressure tactics, no manufactured urgency, just pure value, delivered with integrity.

Last week I experienced the psychology of a Joy First brand in real time.

Today I'm pulling back the curtain on the exact psychology behind building a Joy First Brand for the Joyconomy, including why Harvard Business Review says emotionally connected customers are 52% more valuable than just satisfied ones.

The profitability in Joy First brands isn't just about making people happy. it is about creating deep connections that transform casual customers into lifelong evangelists who can't help but tell everyone about you.

I'll show you the exact moment I knew this company understood something most businesses completely miss, and how you can reverse-engineer that same psychological magic in your own brand.

We're diving deep into the neuroscience of joy, the difference between satisfaction and obsession, and why some brands create customers for life while others struggle with constant churn.

I'll reveal which big brands have mastered these Joy First principles (and have seen massive revenue increases as a result), plus the cautionary tales of billion-dollar brands that abandoned these principles and watched their stock prices crater within weeks.

You'll discover why purpose-driven joy hits differently than gimmicky happiness, how mirror neurons make joy literally contagious, and the ancient Greek concept that explains why some customer experiences create lasting transformation while others are instantly forgotten.

Plus, I'm sharing specific examples of how small businesses can implement these principles immediately from the language you use to describe your services to the unexpected ways you can exceed expectations without breaking the budget.

• The exact neurological process that happens when customers experience Joy First brands (and why it creates addiction-level loyalty)
• Where and why dopamine is released in the joy process (and what this means for your brand)
• The critical difference between satisfaction and joy (and why most businesses are stuck in satisfaction mode)
• How several major corporations just proved Joy First principles drive real revenue (with specific numbers)
• Real examples of small businesses creating unforgettable customer experiences with simple psychological touches
• The customer journey audit that reveals exactly where you're missing joy opportunities

• Joy First branding services: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/branding
• Joy First Founders' Circle: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/jffc
• Joy First Brand Assessment: https://quiz.joyfirstworld.com/brand
• Color Joy program
• Ben & Jerry's linked prosperity model

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While banks failed and bread lines formed in 1929, the beauty industry became the fourth largest industry in North America.

In 2008, as the economy collapsed, Lego achieved record profits.

During the 2020 pandemic, the pet industry exploded with 16% growth.

What did these industries have in common? They weren't selling products: they were selling different versions of joy.

Today I'd like to introduce you to something trend analysts are calling the Joyconomy, and it's already starting to reshape how every successful business will operate in the Ai-fuelled future. This isn't another marketing trend you can ignore. This is the fundamental rewiring of how humans make buying decisions in our anxiety-driven world.

For 20 years, I've been building Joy First brands: businesses that compete on delight rather than desperation, connection rather than unworthiness. While everyone else was optimizing for pain points and fear-based tactics, I was obsessed with feel-good brands that made people's lives better through their products, services, social impact and even their marketing.

That "soft" approach? It just became the hardest competitive advantage in business.

Forbes just declared the Joyconomy a major trend for 2025 and research shows Joy First brands are outperforming traditional competitors across every metric that matters. But here's what most people don't understand... this isn't just about happy marketing or feel-good campaigns.

In this episode, I'm breaking down the five dimensions that separate Joyconomy winners from fear-first businesses that are about to get left behind. I'll show you why luxury brands use 40% more positive emotional language than mass market competitors, how one Italian car company made a radical decision that defied decades of industry wisdom, and why the whole basis of Web3 culture points to a massive shift away from individualism.

This is your roadmap to the future of business. The question isn't whether the Joyconomy is coming... it's whether you'll be ready for it.

• The five dimensions every Joy First brand must master to survive and thrive
• Why fear-based marketing is becoming losing its superior effectiveness (and what works instead)
• The surprising psychology behind why luxury brands don't use problem-solution frameworks
• How to use colour as a competitive advantage when everything has gone grey
• Why community and collectivism are about to disrupt the influencer economy
• The real reason health is becoming the new hustle (and what this means for your business)

• Book a Call with Nic: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/branding

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