# Find Your Brand Focus: A Brand First Workshop - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/find-your-brand-focus-a-brand-first-workshop/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Graphic Design · Quick win · Rated 6 /10 # Find Your Brand Focus: A Brand First Workshop Updated August 2026 Chris Fredricks · Brand Strategy & Content Creation Beginner · 25 min A 25-minute worksheet-driven sprint that forces you to state your differentiation in one sentence, not a comprehensive branding education. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Ffind-your-brand-focus-a-brand-first-workshop%2F1632449298) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## A workshop, not a lecture Chris Fredricks structures this class as a live brainstorming session rather than a series of taught concepts. Each of the seven lessons follows the same rhythm: introduce a worksheet, brainstorm broadly, then narrow to a final answer using a note-and-vote method borrowed from design sprints. Fredricks runs through the entire process using his own studio as the working example, listing ideas out loud, grouping similar ones, and picking favorites in real time. That transparency is the class's biggest strength: watching someone actually narrow "jack of all trades" down to "brand focused design and content creation" demonstrates the method better than any explanation could. The arc moves logically. A 20-year roadmap exercise gets you thinking long-term and loosens up the brainstorming muscle before anything more consequential is at stake. The Start With Why segment, built on Simon Sinek's golden circle, separates what you do, how you do it, and why you do it, with the why treated as the exercise's real center of gravity. From there the course moves through top three values, top three audiences, and a brand promise and differentiation exercise before ending in a single positioning statement: audience, company name, differentiator, and reason to believe. ## Where the value actually sits The differentiation exercise in lesson six is the strongest single piece. Fredricks pushes past vague self-description by asking what a competitor's website says, then asking whether swapping the logos between two competing sites would even be noticeable. That comparison test is a genuinely useful diagnostic that a viewer can apply immediately, independent of the rest of the course. The audience exercise is handled with unusual care for something this short. Fredricks addresses the common fear that narrowing a target audience means losing customers, and walks through why a specific example, a client in her sixties, still fits a stated target of 25 to 45 year old small business owners because that age range describes who refers the work, not who receives it. It is a small but real insight about how audience definitions actually function in practice. The course's limitations are structural rather than a matter of execution. At 25 minutes for seven lessons, each exercise gets only enough time to be demonstrated once, not explained from multiple angles or troubleshot when it goes wrong. Viewers doing this solo, which the course explicitly supports, lose the vote-and-discuss step that gives the group version its checks and balances, leaving a single person to self-select favorites with no counterweight. The course also stops at the positioning statement. It does not touch how that statement translates into visual identity, tone of voice, or actual marketing copy, though Fredricks notes those live in later installments of the series. This is best understood as a facilitation tool wearing course clothing. It is not building branding theory or design skill so much as handing over a template that a working brand strategist actually uses with clients and inviting the viewer to run it on themselves. For a freelancer or small business owner who has never sat down and written out a positioning statement, that alone justifies the 25 minutes. For anyone expecting brand strategy education in a fuller sense, this only opens the door. The standout The note-and-vote brainstorm-then-narrow method, applied consistently across all six exercises, gives a repeatable way to turn a messy pile of ideas into one defensible answer. ## What you will learn - · Build a 20-year roadmap to surface long-term goals before narrowing focus - · Run the Start With Why exercise to separate what, how, and why - · Brainstorm and rank a top three values list using a note-and-vote method - · Define up to three target audiences by age range and relationship to the business - · Identify a core differentiator by comparing your offering against competitors - · Write a complete brand positioning statement combining audience, offering, and proof Best for: Freelancers, solo consultants, or small agency owners who need a fast, structured way to articulate their positioning before writing website copy or pitching clients. Skip it if: Anyone wanting deep branding theory, visual identity guidance, or a polished multi-week curriculum rather than a single brainstorming session. Actionable Steps Clarity of Instruction Helpful Examples Organization of Lessons [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Ffind-your-brand-focus-a-brand-first-workshop%2F1632449298)