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05A free course and dashboard
Build the strategy before the brand.
Make seventeen decisions in the order a strategy needs them, and leave with a strategy you can hand to a designer, a copywriter, an investor or your team.
Welcome back.
- Foundation
- Essence
- Positioning
- Expression
- Action
What it is for
Decide once. Build from it.
A brand strategy is the set of choices the brand is built from. Who it is for, what you offer them, why they should believe you and how you sound. Make those choices once and write them down. Every brief after that starts from the same page.
The system
Five stages, in order.
Build in order for the first pass, then revisit as evidence arrives. The confidence score on every decision shows where to come back.
Stage 1 · Orientation and foundation
What you are actually building.
Lessons 1 to 3 →Stage 2 · Brand essence
Why it matters. Purpose, mission, vision, values.
Lessons 4 to 7 →Stage 3 · Brand positioning
Who it is for and why they should choose you.
Lessons 8 to 10 →Stage 4 · Brand expression
How it should sound, feel and behave.
Lessons 11 to 13 →Stage 5 · Action
Goals, gaps, roadmap, channels and content.
Lessons 14 to 17 →
Where the work happens
Decide, test, use.
One working strategy, one decision at a time. It is the system I use in client work, written so you can run it yourself.
Decide
Every decision lesson ends in the same panel. Write the decision and how sure you are, from 1 to 10. A claim about the market gets its evidence and how you will test it. A strategic choice gets its rationale, its trade-off and what would make you revisit it.
Test
The builders and the alignment scan challenge what you wrote. A positioning map you drag, a quick read that catches hype, and checks that later decisions agree with earlier ones. Each lesson also carries a prompt that asks an AI to attack your answer, with your own notes inside it.
Use
Your strategy document assembles itself as you go. Seven briefs are built from it, ready to hand to the people who will make the brand.
Seven briefs, built from your decisions
Each one goes to the person making that part of the brand.
- Design
- Voice and copy
- Pitch narrative
- New employee
- Homepage
- Channels and content
- Offer and message
Worked examples
Two examples beside you.
Every decision is answered twice, by two companies chosen to be as different as possible. Compare your draft with either inside any lesson.
FieldArc
A nature restoration platform. A complex offer, a sceptical market and a high bar for trust. It walks beside you in every decision lesson.
Tessel
A consumer app for shared household money. Emotional stakes, a crowded category and cheap alternatives.
You leave with
- Seventeen decisions, made across fourteen lessons in the order a strategy needs them
- A strategy document that assembles itself as you write, with a research agenda of what still needs evidence
- Seven briefs built from your decisions, for design, copy, pitch, a new employee, the homepage, channels and the offer
- Two worked examples, FieldArc and Tessel, to check your thinking against
The optional diagnostic
Already have a strategy.
Run the diagnostic first to see where it is thin. Four short reads, then you score your own strategy. Starting from nothing, go straight to lesson one.
Who this is from
Aaron C. Leaman.
Founder of Brighter Future and The Decision Room. Documentary filmmaker before that.
I founded Brighter Future, where we work with founders and teams on the pitch, the raise and the decisions other people have to make about them. I also founded The Decision Room, a closed-door capital convening in Zürich. I started out making documentary films, which is where I learned that a true story told plainly beats a polished one.
I built The Brand Strategy System with the team, from the way we build strategy with clients, so a founder can run it alone. When a live decision has stalled, The Belief Diagnosis finds where it stops moving.
More about AaronQuestions
Before you start.
Is The Brand Strategy System free?
Yes. The lessons are open to everyone and stay free. The working tools, meaning the workbook, dashboard, alignment scan, strategy document and briefs, unlock with an email, once per browser.
What happens to my email and my answers?
Your email unlocks the tools and signs you up to Changemakers, the Brighter Future newsletter, which you can leave from any issue. Your answers stay in your browser and are never sent anywhere. Save your strategy file from the dashboard to keep a copy, because clearing browser data removes them.
How long does the course take?
Around two hours to read. Building your strategy takes four to six focused hours, longer if you stop to gather evidence.
What are the seventeen decisions and the five stages?
You make seventeen decisions across fourteen lessons, in five stages. Orientation and foundation settles what you sell, brand essence sets purpose, mission, vision and values, and brand positioning chooses the audience, the offer and your position against competitors. Brand expression sets personality, voice and look, and Action sets goals, a roadmap, channels and a strategy snapshot.
What does the optional diagnostic do?
It is for founders who already have a strategy. Four short reads explain the five stages and run the method on FieldArc, then a scorecard has you rate twelve areas from one to five and shows your weakest three and the first stage that breaks. Starting from nothing, go straight to lesson one.
How does the confidence score work?
Every decision records how sure you are, from 1 to 10. A market claim also takes its evidence and a test, and a strategic choice takes its rationale, its trade-off and what would make you revisit it. The dashboard flags decisions below seven and confidence that runs ahead of the evidence, so you know where to go back.
What are FieldArc and Tessel?
They are the two worked examples, and both companies are fictional. FieldArc is a nature restoration platform with a complex offer and a sceptical market, and it walks beside you in every decision lesson. Tessel is a consumer app for shared household money, and you can compare your draft with either inside any lesson.
How does AI fit into the course?
Each decision lesson builds a prompt from your own notes, evidence and earlier decisions, and asks an AI to find where your claims run ahead of your evidence. Write your rough answer first, paste the prompt into whichever AI you use, and bring back what it disagrees with. The decision stays yours.
What do I leave with, and can my team use it?
A strategy document that assembles itself as you decide, and seven briefs built from it for design, copy, pitch, a new employee, the homepage, channels and the offer. Export it as text, a read-only page or one file that prints to PDF. Share the page with your team, or hand your strategy file to a co-founder.
Free
Start with the first decision.
Seventeen decisions, in the order a strategy needs them.
The Brand Strategy System is free and stays free. Thanks to Catherine Flores and Niomi Griffin, who worked on its early versions. How the course handles your data.