Not just loyal. Devoted. The difference changes everything about how you build, market, and grow.
Stop holding back. Become fearless. Build a habit of being bold by default. One short video and one exercise delivered to your inbox every day for five days. Free.
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I've spent fifteen years building things: brands, communities, audiences, arguments. Figuring out why some of them catch fire and most of them don't.
I'm a strategist. A writer. A podcaster with a running community whose members tattoo themselves. An author. Occasionally, someone who runs very long distances for reasons I can't fully explain.
What connects all of it: a refusal to follow the playbook until I've seen evidence the playbook works.
About me
Most brand advice assumes you need one of three things: a charismatic founder, a significant budget, or a product so remarkable it markets itself.
How To Start A Cult is the book I wrote to prove all three assumptions wrong. Built around the 7 Cult Commandments, the principles that separate brands people are devoted to from brands people simply buy from, it's a practical guide to building the kind of community identity that makes customers become believers.
Three-times Amazon bestseller. Shortlisted at the Business Book Awards 2022.
Get the bookBad Boy Running started as a podcast. It became something else entirely: a community whose members self-identify as BBR runners before anything else, and express that by tattooing the brand on their bodies. No famous hosts. No marketing budget. Just a podcast that treated its audience like people worth knowing.
The full story
I speak on cult brand strategy, the psychology of devotion, and why bold brands that dare to challenge convention outlast every trend. I'm consistently booked for one reason: I offer a different perspective on well-worn ideas, presented with evidence, humour, and storytelling.
(Oh, and a ton of niche film and TV references. Sorry, not sorry...)
Book JodyI work with a small number of brands each year on cult brand strategy, positioning, and the specific mechanics that turn audiences into communities.
Every engagement starts with an honest audit of where your brand sits against the 7 Cult Commandments, ending with a strategy you can implement yourself. Structured, time-bounded, no ongoing dependency.
Selectively. For brands I believe in.
Work with me
"Most brand advice is designed to make you dependent.
Most playbooks exist to serve the people selling them.
Most conventional thinking keeps you exactly where you are."
Rebel Thinking exists for founders who've noticed this.
Copywriting, launches, content strategy, personal brand, podcasting, influence, community. Everything built around one question: what actually works when you strip out everything that doesn't?
Explore Rebel Thinking"Within a few weeks of working together, Jody switched my mindset to focus on the result I wanted clients to get. He pulled apart the whole offer and we built it again from the ground up. We set a target of five new clients on the first run of the challenge and achieved it."
"After attending a workshop led by Jody on transforming sales copy our event sales conversions increased and it prompted us to think differently about our membership calls to action — encouraging click-through rates and ultimately sales."
"Jody was able to distil everything we discussed into powerful messaging. He got my product and my ideal buyer. I was floored by what he created."
Most brand strategists help you look better. A cult brand strategist helps you mean something — to the right people, in a way they don't want to leave.
Read more
Brand belonging strategy starts from a different question: not how do we get more people to notice us, but how do we make the right people feel like they've found their people?
Read more
Features get you considered. An enemy gets you chosen — and kept. The counterintuitive case for defining what your brand stands against.
Read moreCult brand strategy, unconventional advice and a ton of uncomfortable marketing truths.
Frameworks, case studies, and uncomfortable truths about why conventional brand advice keeps failing the people following it. Sent when there's something worth saying.
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