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. 2d ago

    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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. Aug 5

    What UGC Actually Is (and Why It's Not the Same as Being an Influencer)

    Takeaways A "wrong" first career isn't wasted. Isabella's esthetician training and years in sales and marketing all fed directly into the skills she uses today.UGC (user-generated content) is not the same thing as influencing. Creators don't need a following. They just need to make content brands can use.Authenticity keeps winning as a marketing trend precisely because it's the one thing AI can't replicate.Summary of the episode Taylor and Kelly welcome back a familiar face this week: Isabella Severson, who spent two years on the Moxie team before leaving earlier this year to travel through Europe. Isabella's path into marketing wasn't a straight line. She originally went to school to become an esthetician before realizing it wasn't the right fit, and a part-time opportunity at Moxie eventually turned into a full-time career in social media and content. The conversation traces Isabella's roughly four-month solo trip through Portugal, the UK, Paris, Italy, and Budapest, and what she learned about herself once the external validation of a job, a routine, and a community disappeared. She talks candidly about the discomfort of being alone with her own thoughts for the first time, the confidence she built by working through hard moments on her own, and how the trip became less about the destinations and more about learning to do things for herself instead of for an audience. Isabella also walks through what she's building now: a career as a UGC (user-generated content) creator, making videos for brands without needing a personal following. She breaks down the real differences between influencers, creators, and Canvas UGC work, how she finds and vets brand partners, and why she's picky about which apps and products she'll represent. The episode closes with two rapid-fire questions: the marketing trend Isabella believes is here to stay (authenticity, even as AI content floods the internet), and the advice she'd give her 2023 self as she was just starting out (celebrate every win, because ambition means the goalpost never stops moving). 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. Jul 29

    What to Do When Business Is Slow (Before You Panic)

    Takeaways A slow season is normal, not a sign something is broken, and having a moment (or a full tantrum) about it is allowed, as long as you do not stay there.Cutting your marketing budget the second business slows down is one of the fastest ways to guarantee it stays slow.The first move in a slow season is getting back to basics: follow ups, referrals, pipeline tracking, and reconnecting with current clients before chasing brand new leads.A slow season is one of the best times to work on your business instead of just in it: update your website, write the blog posts you have been putting off, organize your CRM, and plan ahead for your busy season.Track your numbers year round so a slowdown never catches you off guard.On this episode of Behind the Brand, Taylor and Kelly get real about something every business owner eventually faces: the slow season. Whether it is tied to summer, the economy, or just the natural ebb and flow of running a business, that quiet stretch when the phone stops ringing can send even a 17 year business owner into a full blown floor tantrum. Kelly does not sugarcoat it. She still feels that visceral gut drop every time business slows down, and she says the goal is not to avoid the reaction, it is to move through it fast so you can get back to work. Once the emotional reset happens, Taylor and Kelly walk through exactly what to do next. Step one is getting back to basics: following up on old proposals, checking in with past leads, and asking current clients if there is more you can do for them before you ever chase a brand new lead. From there, it is about assessing whether the slowdown is seasonal, systemic, or just a normal dip you have seen before, and using that answer to shape your next move. The conversation gets especially pointed on marketing. Kelly explains why cutting your marketing budget the moment business slows down is one of the most common, and most damaging, moves a business owner can make, pointing to data from the recession and COVID showing that the businesses who stayed the course were the ones who came out ahead. Instead, she and Taylor make the case for treating a slow season as a gift: time to update your website, write the blog content you have been putting off, tighten your internal processes, rally your team, and yes, actually take a vacation. By the end of the episode, Taylor and Kelly land on the real takeaway: a slow season is not a dead end, it is a bump in the road, and how you use that time determines how strong you come out on the other side. 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. Jul 22

    How to Choose Promotional Products People Actually Want to Keep

    Check out Betsy's work: https://www.onbrandpromo.com/ Takeaways Promotional products work best when they're chosen around your specific audience and budget, not picked at random off a catalog.Custom branding rarely costs significantly more than a stock item. The real investment is time, so plan ahead.Always ask for a sample before committing to an order. A vendor who won't send one is telling you something.Betsy built On Brand Promo entirely through referrals and community relationships, without ever paying for advertising.Buyers are shifting toward fewer, higher-quality promotional items instead of ordering cheap products in bulk.Speaking up when something goes wrong gives a good vendor the chance to fix it. Staying quiet just means you're stuck with it.Summary of the episode Taylor and Kelly sit down with Betsy Maurer, owner of On Brand Promo, a Central Minnesota promotional products distributor she's run as a solopreneur for the past five years, on top of thirteen years working in the industry. Betsy walks through how her business started small under a different name, Betsy Branding, and how she landed on a name and identity that reflected what she actually believed in rather than her own name. The conversation moves into the practical side of promotional products: why custom branding usually costs about the same as a stock item once you plan for lead time, why samples matter before any order goes out, and why buyers are increasingly choosing fewer, better items over cheap products in bulk. Betsy shares real examples from working with Moxie directly, including a sock order gone right and a mixed-up shipment that got handled fast because the client spoke up. Betsy also gets candid about running a business around five kids, working a part-time job two days a week just to get out of the house, and building a client base entirely through referrals and community involvement without ever running an ad. The episode closes with her rapid-fire answers on the advice that still sticks with her most: it's okay to say "I don't know," and the best way through fear is to do it afraid anyway. Key Topics Covered: Rebranding from Betsy Branding to On Brand PromoHow to choose promotional products your audience will actually useThe good, better, best model for presenting product optionsWhy custom branded merch doesn't have to cost moreThe importance of requesting samples before orderingSourcing promotional products from Minnesota-based suppliersGrowing a solopreneur business entirely through referralsBalancing business ownership with raising five kidsCommunity involvement as a long-term business strategyWebsite: www.moxiecreative.com

See All (82)

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
    82
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Moxie Creative 2025
  • Show Website
    Behind The Brand