Brand Strategy

The Relatable Executive

One book cover that turned into a publishing brand, a trademarked framework and five sub-brands.

Simrock LLC

2026 — Present

Built

They already had

The skill

Years of being good at one thing, and nothing built around it yet.

We built

The structure

Decide, Build, Live. Three stages, three payments, and they could stop after any of them.

So they reached

Their customer

Someone who can tell in four seconds that this is for them — and buys.

Before any of it

The brief

Who they are, what they do for a living, and what was standing in the way. Every engagement starts with someone who is already good at something and has nothing built around it yet.

“Every sub-brand needs its own voice while staying recognisably part of one family.”

The Relatable Executive and Job Joy book system

Stage one · after the first call

Decide

Who it is for and who it is not for. What they sell, in one sentence a customer can repeat. The name, what they charge, and what this brand will never do. No design happens in this stage — that is deliberate, and it is why everything after it holds together.

They left this stage with one sentence and a short written positioning note. If nothing else had followed, that would still have been the most useful thing.

Stage two · after Decide is signed off

Build

The sentence gets a face. The mark in every format they will need, colour and type with real values written down, the way they talk about it, the first real pieces, and a short set of rules so it stays consistent once someone else is applying it. Everything here comes out of what was decided, not out of what looked nice.

They left this stage with a complete brand kit — the first time they saw their own thing finished.

Stage three · opening day

Live

Everything switched on and running in their name — the site, the social accounts, the listings, the print files, and templates for the things they make every week. After this the brand is open for business.

They left this stage with a business that is open, consistent everywhere, and theirs to run without us in the room.

Still stage three

What a customer changed

The brand is out in the world now, so customers start telling you things. This is the one they told us, and what we did about it.

After the three stages

What it became

One decision, and everything that grew out of it.

The same three stages are open to you

This can be your brand.

Same order, same three stages, and the same thing in your hands at the end of each one — a business a customer can find, understand and buy from. Start with Decide: one sentence and a short written positioning note. You can stop right there if that is all you need.

Not sure which stage you need? The free check takes four minutes and will tell you.

Start with Decide → Take the free check

About the project

Who. An executive coach with one manuscript and an ambition bigger than a book — speaking, coaching, assessment, a membership. The reader had to trust him before buying any of it.

What. Design one book cover. That was the brief. What it actually needed was an architecture, because the book was the entry point to a portfolio that didn't exist yet.

How. The work runs at two levels. At the parent level, an identity holding five sub-brands together — The Relatable Executive, Job Joy, Simrock Services, Simrock Digital and The Human Value Project. At the brand level, The Relatable Executive extended into a three-book series, the trademarked JJFF™ framework, an assessment tool, a member portal, a shop and a speaking programme. That is brand architecture, not identity design: every sub-brand needs its own voice while staying recognisably part of one family, and the rules have to be legible enough for people who are not designers to follow.

Outcome. $100K in attributed consulting business tied to the system. Twenty-plus cover concepts explored before committing, then print-ready cover and full wrap delivered to spec with Amazon launch assets and collateral.

The brief was one book cover. Thirty years of executive coaching behind it, one manuscript, and nothing else built — no company, no positioning, nothing anyone could buy beyond the book itself.

So the first thing settled was not the cover. It was what the business actually was: who it serves, what it sells after the book, and whether this was an author brand or a parent company with things underneath it. That answer changed everything downstream — a cover designed for an author is a different object from a cover designed as the entry point to a portfolio.

Result: A parent company rather than a book — Simrock, with the architecture to hold whatever came next.

Two levels at once. At the parent level, an identity that could hold five sub-brands together — The Relatable Executive, Job Joy, Simrock Services, Simrock Digital and The Human Value Project — each with its own voice while staying recognisably one family.

At the brand level, The Relatable Executive extended into a three-book series, the trademarked JJFF™ framework, an assessment tool and a speaking programme. Twenty-plus cover concepts explored before committing, then print-ready cover and full wrap delivered to the printer's spec.

The rules had to be legible to someone who is not a designer, because the person applying them most often would be him.

Result: One architecture carrying five sub-brands, a trademarked framework, and a cover system that survived becoming a series.

The site, the shop, the member portal and the assessment went live under the parent identity, with the Amazon launch assets built to platform spec and the collateral a speaker actually needs.

What makes this one hold is that it kept growing after handover. New sub-brands have been added since without coming back for a redesign, which is the only real test of whether an architecture works.

Result: $100K in attributed consulting business tied to the system, and a portfolio that has extended twice without being rebuilt.

Trademark groundwork for the JJFF™ framework

Amazon listing assets built to platform spec — cover, A+ content, category imagery

Print-ready wrap delivered to the printer's die, spine width calculated to final page count

Naming and positioning for each sub-brand as it was added

Speaking collateral — one-sheet, slide template, headshot direction

Rules written for a non-designer, so the system holds between engagements

What customers said

Reviews

“Every sub-brand needs its own voice while staying recognisably part of one family.”

Results

$100K in attributed consulting business tied to the brand system.
Five sub-brands supported under one architecture, plus the trademarked JJFF™ framework.
20+ cover concepts explored before committing to production.
Print-ready cover and full wrap delivered to spec, with Amazon launch assets and collateral.

Client

Simrock LLC

Discipline

Brand Strategy

Timeline

2026 — Present

Position

Built