What Are You Known For?

Watching jiu-jitsu and grappling athletes, I keep thinking the same thing.

People know far too little about branding.

So this one is about that.

01 What happens when it works

Let me start with the good part. When branding works, this is what happens to an athlete.

• You get invited to do seminars
• Your seminar price goes up
• Matches get made for you

There's more. A lot of good things come to the athlete.

02 What branding is

So what is branding?

It's what you do to double the image an athlete already has.

By that I mean things like these.

• What you work on
• Each thing you say
• What you wear
• Your trademark

They all lead to one image. Part of it is what people see. Part of it is words.

Keep putting it out, and you become “oh, that's the one who…” Branding is a device for carving who you are into people's memory.

03 The ones at the top are good at this

The UFC is the easiest example.

The trash talk from the fighters at the very top. When you think about it, that's branding too. This one says things like this. That one dresses like that. They keep putting it out, so people remember them.

I think you need it to get to the top of the UFC. And in Japan especially, the entertaining ones tend to get picked, regardless of how strong they are.

Grapplers are no different. The ones at the top are good at this.

They're strong, of course. And on top of that, what they say is entertaining. The brand they run is original. Their team has a fun name. They've built an image.

04 You don't do it alone

But far too many athletes have no idea how to do it.

It can't be helped. Someone who has done nothing but train isn't going to be good at using an image on purpose. Of course not.

But the athletes who had someone behind the scenes handling it were strong. They tend to get popular.

The point is, you think as a team. Let's put this line this way. Let's go with this strategy this time. Not one person. A team.

05 What I've been doing

In Japan, I've done a fair amount of branding work for jiu-jitsu athletes.

How to say things on social media. How to get known. We'd think it through together, and I'd make videos and clips for social. I've been helping like that for years.

Why did I start?

I'm a blogger, but before that I ran a music label. To get an artist out into the world, I had to work out how to make the image they already had easier to understand. I thought about that every day.

Because of that, I can tell. With this person, this is what would be fun.

It isn't about making everyone move the same way. It's about that one person. So I can give direction on what they say, and tell them, let's run this project, let's put out this kind of video.

06 What matters most is consistency

This is the important part.

The most important thing in branding is consistency.

This person always says this kind of thing, and that's why they're entertaining. You give them that one clear angle.

We do the same thing at SubPro now. SubPro is a kind of media. For this grappler, here's the image. We give that a shape by building the athlete's site.

07 Find one person who's good at it

Here's what I want to say.

I know athletes don't have time to think about branding. And the owner of your gym, or the people ahead of you there, can't necessarily do it either.

So find someone who's good at it.

There's usually one in every gym. Someone who's good at this kind of thing.

What kind of person? Someone who does consulting.

There are all kinds of consultants. The ones I mean work on bringing in customers. Especially the ones who can do it on the web. They have one particular skill. They can make a person's image easy to understand.

It's the same thing.

What's different about this person's potential? What are they good at, and what are they not? What can this person make happen? They see that, and they make it easy to understand.

Go and find the person who can do that.

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