Behind The Brand

Moxie Creative
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Welcome to Behind the Brand, a podcast for small business owners, solopreneurs, and aspiring entrepreneurs who are ready to start strong, stand out, and stay bold. Hosted by the powerhouse marketers behind Moxie Creative, this podcast offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build and grow a memorable brand. With over 30 years of experience helping businesses grow, we share bold moves, real-life client transformations, and actionable lessons you can apply to your own business. Hear directly from our clients as we peel back the layers of their brands to reveal the bold decisions that helped them overcome challenges, grow their businesses, and stay ahead of the curve. We’re here to inspire you to think big, take risks, and be bold. Let’s get started—your next big idea is just a listen-away. Stay connected with us! Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative www.moxiecreative.com

  1. 4d ago

    The Check Engine Light in Your Head: A Counselor's Guide to Catching Burnout Early

    Takeaways High-functioning stress often hides behind competence, not incompetence, which is exactly why it goes unaddressed for so long.Not all stress is bad. The goal isn't eliminating it, it's building the flexibility to turn the volume up and down as needed."False truths," the limits we quietly impose on ourselves, drive a lot of pressure that was never coming from anyone else.Knowing your identity, personally and in business, makes every other decision (branding included) easier to make.The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline isn't just for the worst moments. It's a resource for anyone who needs to talk something through.Taylor and Kelly sit down with Nate Van Heuveln, owner of Criterion Counseling in St. Cloud, to talk about the clients most people don't picture when they think about therapy: high-functioning adults who look like they have it all together while quietly running on empty. Nate walks through his path into counseling, from a childhood surrounded by helping professionals to a "scenic route" through paper routes, rock-picking, and industrial-organizational psychology before landing on his own practice in January 2026. The conversation digs into what makes high-functioning stress so easy to miss. Nate's clients are the caregivers, first responders, and business owners everyone else relies on, which makes them the least likely to reach out first. He unpacks the idea of "false truths," the self-imposed standards that show up as a mental yardstick most of us are holding up to ourselves, and offers a simple reframe: you have 100 percent to give on any given day, not 200, and that's allowed to look different day to day. The episode also turns into an unexpected marketing conversation. Nate connects his own approach to building Criterion Counseling back to a concept Taylor and Kelly talk about constantly with clients: knowing who you are before you try to market anything. Before wrapping, Nate shares a visual reminder of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and encourages listeners to treat it as a resource for any moment that feels heavy, not just a crisis line of last resort. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative Website: www.moxiecreative.com

  2. Sep 23

    Why Your Business Sounds Like Every Competitor (And How to Stand Out)

    Takeaways Words like quality, experience, trusted, and great service are usually true, but when every competitor uses them, they stop meaning much of anything and stop setting you apart.Quality work, expertise, and caring about customers are what customers already expect. To differentiate your business, describe how you deliver, not just that you do.Your differentiator is rarely something to invent. A brand positioning process uncovers it through deeper conversations about how your business actually works.Summary of the episode Taylor and Kelly open this episode of Behind the Brand with a simple exercise for small business owners: pull up five competitor websites and start reading. Chances are you will see the same words over and over, including quality, trusted, custom solutions, and exceptional service. The hosts explain why so many businesses end up in what they call the sea of sameness. Those words feel safe, and many owners believe fitting in means looking and sounding like the competition. They also make the point that this is not a new AI problem. Businesses have been repeating the same adjectives for as long as marketing has existed. From there, the conversation moves into how to actually find a message that is different. Kelly and Taylor explain that differentiation is not only a design decision. It also lives in the words you use, and brand positioning goes well beyond choosing a formal or friendly tone. They walk through an accountant example to show how describing the how, such as meeting with clients twice a year before tax time, turns a generic claim into a real difference. Kelly also shares an anonymized story about a long-term client who believed service was their edge, and why a positioning statement has to be true before it can be used. The hosts then break down what a brand platform (or brand strategy) includes: a differentiating factor, a positioning statement, messaging and tone, and target audience personas. They clarify that it is a separate service from a visual identity, and that it can be done as a standalone project. Taylor shares a recent example of a solopreneur photographer who discovered that what she really sold was the experience leading up to the final photos, and both hosts agree that the conversations along the way are often the most valuable part of the process. The episode closes with a look at AI and brand voice. Because AI takes the average of everything already published, it tends to repeat the sameness businesses are trying to escape. Taylor and Kelly talk about developing a distinct style, using Moxie's own tongue-in-cheek personality as the example, and admit they are due to put their own brand through a whiteboard session and SWOT analysis three and a half years in. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative Website: www.moxiecreative.com

  3. Sep 16

    Entrepreneurship Rarely Goes to Plan: A Cider Company's Wild Ride From College Dorm to National Distribution

    Takeaways Entrepreneurship rarely goes according to plan. Even a brand as established as Minneapolis Cider Company nearly lost its only customer before selling its first can.Speed can be a real competitive advantage. Trail Magic went from concept to shelf-ready product in 19 days and became Minnesota's first THC beverage brand.Regulatory uncertainty is one of the biggest risks in an emerging beverage category, and the businesses that survive it are the ones that adapt fastest.Your personal relationships are part of your business plan. Entrepreneurs often overlook the partners and family who make growth possible.Momentum beats a perfect plan. Getting a product to market and adjusting as you go outperforms over-preparing before your first sale.Jason Dayton, co-founder of Minneapolis Cider Company and its sister brand Trail Magic, joins Taylor and Kelly to talk about a business built almost entirely on reinvention. What started as a senior class project at the University of Minnesota turned into a real cider company, but only after Jason and his partners nearly lost their first and only distributor over a batch that didn't taste right, forcing a red-eye flight to Oregon to fix the recipe before it ever reached a shelf. From there, the conversation moves through the milestones that built Minneapolis Cider Company into a national player: opening a production facility and taproom in Northeast Minneapolis, surviving a pandemic shutdown one month after turning its first profit, and then, in July 2022, launching Trail Magic, one of the first THC beverage brands in Minnesota, in just 19 days. Jason walks through how quickly the category took off, why the company deliberately kept Trail Magic separate from its cider brand, and the patchwork of state-by-state regulations that make distributing a hemp-derived THC product across 24 states so complicated. The episode also gets into the federal landscape shaping the category's future, including a looming ban on high-potency hemp products and what it would mean for THC beverages and the breweries that have come to depend on them. Jason shares how licensing the Crispin Cider brand from Molson Coors helped build out national distribution relationships, and closes with two pieces of advice that go beyond the beverage industry: take the first step instead of overplanning, and remember that a spouse or partner is an equal stakeholder in the business, even when they aren't the one clocking in every day. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative Website: www.moxiecreative.com

  4. Sep 9

    What "Free" AI-Generated Design Actually Costs Your Brand

    Takeaways AI can produce a design in seconds, but speed isn't the same as strategy. When every business pulls from the same tools and trends, the output starts to look the same across the board.Cutting corners on design sends a signal to customers. If your marketing looks cheap or generic, people start wondering what else about your business might be cutting corners too.AI still can't replicate the strategic thinking, visual hierarchy, and craft that goes into real design work, according to Moxie's creative director Michael Nelson, who uses AI daily and sees its real limits firsthand.Taylor and Kelly bring in Moxie's creative director, Michael Nelson, for a rare three-person episode built around a topic that's been driving them a little crazy: the flood of generative AI design showing up in small business marketing. They're upfront from the start that this isn't an anti-AI rant. Moxie uses AI daily, for things like writing assistance, website audits, and speeding up small edits like removing a person from a photo. What they actually want to unpack is what happens when speed and convenience start replacing real strategy and creative thought, especially when a business generates flyers, social graphics, or other branded content from a prompt with no professional behind it. Michael, sitting in as the only designer in the room, walks through why AI-generated design so often falls flat. It's trained on a mix of good and bad existing work, so it tends to land in a mediocre middle, and because so many businesses are drawing from the same tools, the results start to look interchangeable. He and the hosts talk through very literal consequences they've seen firsthand: printers refusing to print AI-generated files because they aren't print ready, a client's trade show display that had to be redone at the eleventh hour because the AI file couldn't scale to size, and social posts going out with the wrong logo because AI can't actually recreate a specific brand asset. The bigger thread of the conversation is what all of this communicates to customers. When a business's marketing looks cheap or generic, Taylor and Kelly argue, it raises a bigger question in the viewer's mind: what else is this business cutting corners on? A brand isn't just a logo, it's a customer's perception of how much a business has invested in itself, and that perception quietly follows into decisions about quality, service, and trust. They're careful to note this isn't about shaming business owners currently leaning on AI this way, more about naming the trend and hoping it shifts, the same way audiences are already growing tired of obviously AI-generated content elsewhere. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative Website: www.moxiecreative.com

  5. Sep 2

    Best of Summer 2026: The Marketing Advice We Keep Coming Back To

    This episode of Behind the Brand is a Best of Summer 2026 roundup, a mashup of the conversations from the past few months that Taylor and Kelly keep coming back to. They're taking a short break before the fall rush hits, but they didn't want to leave listeners without something useful in the meantime. The episode opens with a catch-up with Isabella Severson, a former Moxie team member who left the agency to travel solo through Europe and has since built a career as a UGC (user-generated content) creator. She talks candidly about walking away from esthetician school once she realized it wasn't the right fit, the fear that came with leaving a stable job for an uncertain path, and how stepping away from the noise of her day-to-day finally gave her the clarity to figure out what she actually wanted. From there, Taylor and Kelly dig into one of their most requested topics: why Q4 winners are actually made in July. They break down what needs months of lead time (website audits, campaign optimization, creative development), why a slow summer for your business doesn't mean your marketing should slow down too, and what a first meeting with Moxie actually looks like. Spoiler: they'd rather you show up with questions than a fully formed plan, and they'd really rather you not show up with an AI-generated logo mockup. The episode also revisits a conversation about surviving slow seasons, with Kelly drawing on her 17 years of experience to explain why cutting your marketing budget during a downturn is one of the worst moves you can make, and why a slow stretch can actually be the best time to realign your team and get back to basics. Finally, Taylor and Kelly sit down with the team at Bad Habit Brewery, a longtime client, to talk about how a brand builds real staying power in an industry with a lot more closures than openings these days. From treating the taproom as a neighborhood gathering place instead of a distribution business, to letting beer tenders test new flavors on real customers before a label ever gets designed, Bad Habit's approach is a case study in knowing exactly what your brand stands for. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative Website: www.moxiecreative.com

  6. Aug 26

    How to Know When Your Business Needs a Brand Strategy

    Takeaways A logo is not a brand strategy. Positioning, personality, voice, audience personas, brand story, and elevator pitch all come before the visual identity, and they're what actually make the visuals work.If you can't explain your business in one line, or your whole team would describe it differently, that's a signal you need a brand strategy, not more marketing.Marketing struggles are often brand problems wearing a marketing costume. When a business keeps changing tactics and nothing improves, the issue usually lives in the message, not the channel delivering it.What you believe your differentiator is and what your customers actually think can be two completely different things. Real customer research, not assumption, is what uncovers the truth.Taylor and Kelly get into a conversation they say they should probably be having about their own business too: the difference between a logo and an actual brand strategy. Clients almost always walk in the door asking for a logo, sometimes bundled with a brand guide, but a logo is only the visual identity. The brand itself includes the positioning statement, brand personality and voice, audience personas, brand story, and elevator pitch, and it's usually the piece that got skipped, outdated, or never written down in the first place. The hosts walk through why this gap shows up. Sometimes a business has simply changed. They talk through an anonymized example of a growing company that started out targeting a more blue collar audience and has since expanded into a white collar one, creating internal confusion about tone, messaging, and even a tagline that corporate loves but that risks alienating the very customers it's meant to reach. They also reference a solopreneur photographer client working through the same process from a completely different angle: not "I need a bigger brand," but "I can't explain what makes me different from every other photographer." A recurring thread is that marketing is the message and the vehicle, and it's easy to blame the vehicle (social media, the website, the ad spend) when the real issue is the message underneath it. Kelly shares an anonymized example of a past client convinced their differentiator was customer service, until informal research and conversations with actual customers told a different story entirely. That's the value of an outside perspective: an agency isn't inside the business every day, so it asks different questions and can surface blind spots the owner can't see from the inside. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative Website: www.moxiecreative.com

  7. Aug 19

    Behind the Immersive Show That Puts Audiences Inside Folsom Prison

    Folsom Prison Experience: https://folsomprisonexperience.com/ Takeaways A tribute act only becomes a business when you treat it like one. Jay Ernest turned "sounding like Johnny Cash" into Church of Cash, a touring act that now plays roughly 20 to 25 shows a year across the country and has toured Europe for over a decade.Your brand has to match the quality of what you're selling. Once Folsom Prison Experience outgrew its original website, Jay knew it was time to invest in branding that matched the caliber of the show."The show before the show" matters. A strong pre-show identity, meaning the website tone, the artwork, and the printed program, sets audience expectations before anyone ever sits down.Taylor and Kelly sit down with Jay Ernest, lead singer of Church of Cash and co-creator of Folsom Prison Experience, an immersive theatrical recreation of Johnny Cash's legendary 1968 live album recorded at Folsom State Prison. Jay traces his path from playing four-hour sets for tips at an Irish bar in Honolulu to discovering his voice sounded uncannily like Johnny Cash, launching the first Church of Cash in 2009, and eventually relocating to Minnesota, where the band played Tuesday nights at a local bar for $35 split five ways. From there, Jay built Church of Cash into a full-time touring act, landing a European booking agent in 2015 and selling out shows overseas for more than a decade. The conversation shifts to Folsom Prison Experience, the immersive show Jay created with his business partner, Tom Pickard, during the COVID shutdown. Rather than a standard tribute concert, the show places the audience inside Folsom State Prison itself, complete with inmate numbers, in-character guards working the aisles, and a set list built almost entirely from what Johnny Cash actually played that day. A major thread of the episode is the show's rebrand. As Folsom Prison Experience grew, Jay realized his original website no longer reflected the quality of what audiences were actually seeing on stage. Taylor and Kelly walk through what that project looked like from Moxie's side: building a website designed to deliver "the show before the show," commissioning original illustration work for a movie-poster feel, and producing a printed program audiences now take home as a keepsake. Jay is candid about what it means for a business owner to hand a creative vision to a team and trust the process, and how the finished brand changed the way audiences and venues perceive the show before a single ticket is scanned. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative Website: www.moxiecreative.com

  8. Aug 12

    Why Your Marketing Isn't Working (Even When You're Doing Everything Right)

    Takeaways One marketing tactic is not a marketing plan. A single ad, one email blast, or one social platform will never carry the weight of a full strategy on its own.Positioning is knowing what problem you solve for your customer. Messaging is how you communicate that. Get either wrong and no tactic will save you.Design and creative aren't decoration, they signal quality to your customer whether you realize it or not. A mismatched website or a generic template can undercut an otherwise solid business.Before you add another tactic, know what you're actually measuring. Brand awareness and lead generation are different goals with different metrics, and confusing the two leads to disappointment.If your marketing feels like it isn't working, the problem is almost never the tactic itself, it's usually the message behind it.Taylor and Kelly tackle one of the most common complaints they hear from small business owners: "We're doing everything, and it still isn't working." In this episode, they break down why checking every marketing box (a website, a social presence, some ads) doesn't guarantee results, and why chasing a competitor's tactic without understanding your own audience is a losing game. A single activity, they explain, is not a strategy. It's a piece of one. From there, the conversation moves into positioning and messaging, the two things Taylor and Kelly say get overlooked the most because business owners are often too close to their own product to see it the way a customer does. They walk through real examples, including a home furnishings client who wanted to advertise where he personally listened rather than where his actual customers were, to illustrate how easy it is to market to yourself instead of your audience. The episode also digs into the psychology of design and why "good enough" DIY branding can quietly cost a business credibility, even when the business itself is excellent. Taylor and Kelly are careful to draw a line here: this isn't a knock on every small business doing what they can with what they have. It's aimed at businesses charging a premium who expect premium results without investing in the strategy behind the visuals. They close with a practical framework for measuring marketing efforts correctly, distinguishing between brand awareness and lead generation, and a reminder that a bad experience with one agency or one tactic doesn't mean marketing itself doesn't work for your business. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative Website: www.moxiecreative.com

See All (85)

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Welcome to Behind the Brand, a podcast for small business owners, solopreneurs, and aspiring entrepreneurs who are ready to start strong, stand out, and stay bold. Hosted by the powerhouse marketers behind Moxie Creative, this podcast offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build and grow a memorable brand. With over 30 years of experience helping businesses grow, we share bold moves, real-life client transformations, and actionable lessons you can apply to your own business. Hear directly from our clients as we peel back the layers of their brands to reveal the bold decisions that helped them overcome challenges, grow their businesses, and stay ahead of the curve. We’re here to inspire you to think big, take risks, and be bold. Let’s get started—your next big idea is just a listen-away. Stay connected with us! Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreative Facebook https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreative Instagram https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/ Behance https://www.behance.net/moxiecreative LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreative www.moxiecreative.com

Information

  • Creator
    Moxie Creative
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    85
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Moxie Creative 2025
  • Show Website
    Behind The Brand