The Contrarians Blueprint
Your brand strategy may have a blind spot (and it's not what you think)
Episode 6
Let's play devil's advocate here. You may be building your brand strategy on intuition instead of insights, and it's quietly sabotaging your growth.
While your team may be warning you about the obvious blind spots – inconsistent messaging, poor market research, weak positioning – they're missing the biggest one: Your brand strategy isn't failing because of what you don't know. It's failing because of what you think you know for sure.
The Real Problem is you're not just the Founder/Leader – you're the Chief Assumption Officer. Every "we know our market" or "our customers want" statement is a potential growth killer. We know this because it's exactly the mistake we made with SingleThread. For Funded Startups & Growing SMEs, your rapid growth isn't just potentially hiding your blind spots – it's making them bigger. While you're focused on scaling, your assumptions are scaling too.
Three dangerous assumptions that could kill your growth
- The Feature Fallacy - Thinking your product features are your value. Missing the emotional drivers behind purchase decisions. Forgetting that solutions sell, specifications don't.
- The Market Myth - Believing your target market is who you want it to be. Ignoring who's actually buying and why. Missing the gap between your pitch and their pain.
- The Scale Trap - Assuming what worked at startup will work at scale. Mistaking early adopter love for market fit. Letting growth hide fundamental brand issues.
Here are some practical steps to check your blind spots
- The Assumption Audit
- List everything you "know" about your market.
- Find data that proves each point.
- Be ruthless with unproven beliefs.
- The Customer Reality Check
- Interview customers who left.
- Talk to prospects who didn't convert.
- Listen for patterns you've been ignoring.
- The Growth Pressure Test
- Examine what breaks when you scale.
- Look for repeated friction points.
- Question if your brand can support 10x growth.
Remember: Your biggest competitor isn't another company – it's your own assumptions about what your market needs. If you need any proof, just ask us. Been there and got the T-shirt.
If you're brave enough to challenge what you think you know about your brand, let's have an honest conversation about what's really holding your growth back.
Book a discovery call (30 minutes, zero assumptions, and we'll tell you straight up what we see).