Jenna Shaw's profile picture

If you don’t become your audience’s only choice, you’re just another option

If you don’t become your audience’s only choice, you’re just another option

In 48h, I’ll expose the incoherence betraying your brand — and help you kill it

In 48h, I’ll expose the incoherence betraying your brand — and help you kill it

A few ways I've helped my clients win

A few ways I've helped my clients win

A quick introduction before we get started

A quick introduction before we get started

I'm Sebastian.

I spent a decade behind the scenes, helping 7-, 8-, and 9-figure brands build tribal identities — the specific combination of signals, promises, and follow-through that make your audience think, "Holy shit! This brand actually gets it!”

Here's what I learned: People want respect, status and belonging, not more stuff.

You have to look at your audience with empathy to understand and solve their problems.

So I built the Coherence Sequence to kill the betrayals standing between your brand and the fans it deserves.

I'm Sebastian.

I spent a decade behind the scenes, helping 7-, 8-, and 9-figure brands build tribal identities — the specific combination of signals, promises, and follow-through that make your audience think, "Holy shit! This brand actually gets it!”

Here's what I learned: People want respect, status and belonging, not more stuff.

You have to look at your audience with empathy to understand and solve their problems.

So I built the Coherence Sequence to kill the betrayals standing between your brand and the fans it deserves.

Your brand's getting some attention

Your brand's getting some attention

But somehow, it still isn't building the momentum it deserves.

Meanwhile, your CAC keeps climbing.

The worst part?

You cannot stop running ads, even if you’re burning money.

So you’re staring at your screen, wondering how you’re gonna break it to your team that ‘necessary cuts’ are coming.

Now, if you're reading this, I'm betting you've already tried growth hackers, more ads, more spend, more "optimization."

Or maybe you dropped ~$100k on one of those performance art collectives cosplaying as branding agencies.

You know, the type that hand you a deck with 50 slides filled with lofty 'mission statements' and made-up words that sound like they got pulled straight out of a séance?

You can barely explain this garbage to your team, let alone implement it.

If you're lucky, they'll give you a nice logo, maybe even a brand book you'll never use.

3 months later, your metrics still suck.

I've watched this same pattern play out with 7- to 9-figure brands, torching millions every month.

Different products, different industries. Same death spiral.

But somehow, it still isn't building the momentum it deserves.

Meanwhile, your CAC keeps climbing.

The worst part?

You cannot stop running ads, even if you’re burning money.

So you’re staring at your screen, wondering how you’re gonna break it to your team that ‘necessary cuts’ are coming.

Now, if you're reading this, I'm betting you've already tried growth hackers, more ads, more spend, more "optimization."

Or maybe you dropped ~$100k on one of those performance art collectives cosplaying as branding agencies.

You know, the type that hand you a deck with 50 slides filled with lofty 'mission statements' and made-up words that sound like they got pulled straight out of a séance?

You can barely explain this garbage to your team, let alone implement it.

If you're lucky, they'll give you a nice logo, maybe even a brand book you'll never use.

3 months later, your metrics still suck.

I've watched this same pattern play out with 7- to 9-figure brands, torching millions every month.

Different products, different industries. Same death spiral.

How your brand betrays itself

How your brand betrays itself

Everyone’s been taught the same cliché ‘customer persona’ garbage since the 70s.

Knowing your customer's favorite Thursday night drink?

What they binge on Netflix?

Their underwear size?

This is just astrology for marketers.

These "award-winning" agencies love to say they're 'data-driven,' but then their data is shit like:

'Sandra, 34, drinks oat lattes, shops at Whole Foods, watches Friends reruns.'

Even if Sandra can afford you, it doesn't mean she shares your ideas, your values or your vision.

Now you're left with nothing to base decisions on.

And with no real insight, you default to what you can measure. CTR. CPM. Conversion rate.

The spreadsheet becomes the strategy — because the persona gave you nothing to strategize with.

But spreadsheet logic only knows one song: 'Cut costs! More ads = more eyeballs! Lower your prices!'

It doesn't care that your brand's supposed to be premium.

You end up with ads that say one thing. Sub-2% conversion rate landing pages that say another.

Or messaging that promises transformation while pricing screams 'commodity.'

Pretty incoherent, right? Your audience certainly thinks so.

Everyone’s been taught the same cliché ‘customer persona’ garbage since the 70s.

Knowing your customer's favorite Thursday night drink?

What they binge on Netflix?

Their underwear size?

This is just astrology for marketers.

These "award-winning" agencies love to say they're 'data-driven,' but then their data is shit like:

'Sandra, 34, drinks oat lattes, shops at Whole Foods, watches Friends reruns.'

Even if Sandra can afford you, it doesn't mean she shares your ideas, your values or your vision.

Now you're left with nothing to base decisions on.

And with no real insight, you default to what you can measure. CTR. CPM. Conversion rate.

The spreadsheet becomes the strategy — because the persona gave you nothing to strategize with.

But spreadsheet logic only knows one song: 'Cut costs! More ads = more eyeballs! Lower your prices!'

It doesn't care that your brand's supposed to be premium.

You end up with ads that say one thing. Sub-2% conversion rate landing pages that say another.

Or messaging that promises transformation while pricing screams 'commodity.'

Pretty incoherent, right? Your audience certainly thinks so.

The Coherence Sequence

The Coherence Sequence

Incoherent brands will always chase customers. Coherent brands create fans. 

Look at the ones that don't have to fight over price — Lego, Apple, and Porsche aren't running more ads than everyone else. They're not "optimizing" harder.

And when's the last time you saw Valve run an ad for Steam?

If you haven't picked up a controller since 8-bit Mario: gaming is a $200B industry.

Valve took 80% of the $50B PC gaming market without running a single ad in 23 years — because they figured out what they stand for, who their fans are, and killed everything that contradicted it.

Microsoft, Epic, EA and others wasted well over $20 billion trying to compete.

Now all their games are sold on Steam. And it only made Valve look better.

When a brand is coherent, it doesn't need to buy attention. It earns evangelists.

Fans don't comparison shop. They don't haggle on price.

They tell their friends because your brand feels like it's theirs.

That's what the Coherence Sequence builds.

Incoherent brands will always chase customers. Coherent brands create fans. 

Look at the ones that don't have to fight over price — Lego, Apple, and Porsche aren't running more ads than everyone else. They're not "optimizing" harder.

And when's the last time you saw Valve run an ad for Steam?

If you haven't picked up a controller since 8-bit Mario: gaming is a $200B industry.

Valve took 80% of the $50B PC gaming market without running a single ad in 23 years — because they figured out what they stand for, who their fans are, and killed everything that contradicted it.

Microsoft, Epic, EA and others wasted well over $20 billion trying to compete.

Now all their games are sold on Steam. And it only made Valve look better.

When a brand is coherent, it doesn't need to buy attention. It earns evangelists.

Fans don't comparison shop. They don't haggle on price.

They tell their friends because your brand feels like it's theirs.

That's what the Coherence Sequence builds.

So make your choice: fans or customers?

So make your choice:
fans or customers?

And before you say "both," no, the path is different.

You either become your audience's only choice or one of many forgettable options.

They need to feel you’re in their corner, not cutting corners.

And before you say "both," no, the path is different.

You either become your audience's only choice or one of many forgettable options.

They need to feel you’re in their corner, not cutting corners.

Gridum website design image
Gridum website design image
Gridum product design image
Gridum product design image

Find your tribe

Find your tribe

Agency rebrands are product-first.

The Coherence Sequence is tribe-first.

It reveals your real fans, their culture, and what they won't forgive.

Agency rebrands are product-first.

The Coherence Sequence is tribe-first.

It reveals your real fans, their culture, and what they won't forgive.

Kill your betrayals

Kill your betrayals

Your audience feels when what you say, what you sell, and what people experience don't match. Even if they can't name it.

Every gap between your promise and their experience is a betrayal. The Sequence finds and maps them, then prioritizes what you need to fix first.

Your audience feels when what you say, what you sell, and what people experience don't match. Even if they can't name it.

Every gap between your promise and their experience is a betrayal. The Sequence finds and maps them, then prioritizes what you need to fix first.

Gridum no-code development image
Gridum no-code development image

What coherence looks like — a case study

What coherence looks like:
a case study

Top 5 Tech newsletter • 1.6M+ subscribers

Top 5 Tech newsletter 1.6M+ subscribers

Top 5 Tech newsletter • 1.6M+ subscribers

3x→6x
ROAS in 3 months

3x→6x
ROAS in 3 months

25%→47%
Average hook rate

25%→47%
Average hook rate

2x
Monthly subscribers

2x
Monthly subscribers

$7M+
Attributed revenue

$7M+
Attributed revenue

TLDR had 4 million subscribers across all their newsletters.

So I started with their biggest, tldr.tech and tldr.ai, because they had 1.2M and 400k daily readers.

The Coherence Sequence immediately exposed their biggest betrayal: framing.

It's what kept their average hook rate at a dismal 25% and why their best-performing ad was a static from 2022.

Tldr.tech fans are devs, designers, analysts — risk-averse employees afraid of becoming obsolete.

And, sure, they want to be ahead on everything tech and AI.

But tech workers aren't tech founders. They don't wake up thinking, "This'll get me ahead!"

They're wondering, "Will this help me stay relevant?"

Once the messaging aligned with that fear, the ads stopped fighting for attention. They started earning it.

Same product. Same audience. Different signal. The tribe recognized itself.

TLDR had 4 million subscribers across all their newsletters.

So I started with their biggest, tldr.tech and tldr.ai, because they had 1.2M and 400k daily readers.

The Coherence Sequence immediately exposed their biggest betrayal: framing.

It's what kept their average hook rate at a dismal 25% and why their best-performing ad was a static from 2022.

Tldr.tech fans are devs, designers, analysts — risk-averse employees afraid of becoming obsolete.

And, sure, they want to be ahead on everything tech and AI.

But tech workers aren't tech founders. They don't wake up thinking, "This'll get me ahead!"

They're wondering, "Will this help me stay relevant?"

Once the messaging aligned with that fear, the ads stopped fighting for attention. They started earning it.

Same product. Same audience. Different signal. The tribe recognized itself.

2 ways to work with me

2 ways to work with me

Brand betrayal hit list

Brand betrayal hit list

$14,000

  • 1 doc, 10 pages, all killer no filler, in 48h.

    Get a complete audience map: their fears, needs, and expectations, in their words.

    Your biggest brand betrayals, ranked by severity, each with its specific fix.

    + a 90-minute walkthrough.

  • Finally see your momentum killers

  • Create trust with your specific tribe

  • Never run out of content again

  • Get clarity, not a slideshow

  • Easily brief your team and implement

Hit list + Build

$35,000

  • Everything in the Hit List, plus I build your first assets and connect you to the right people.

  • Coherence across your marketing stack

    Coherence across
    your marketing stack

    Ads, LP, site, emails — nothing breaks narrative

  • A fresh deck stacked in your favor

    20 net new ad concepts and LP copy that convert

  • Missing something vital? "I know a guy"

    Missing something vital?
    "I know a guy"

    Access my network of top-tier creative strategists, content creators, devs, media buyers, and designers

Here's what people are saying

  • Author image

    Svetlana Petrovici

    Senior Project Manager

    MetaDesign

    "We've brought Sebastian in on multiple projects to find the blind spots in our messaging. One of them won a Red Dot Award."

  • Author image

    Em Kovacs

    Director of Discovery and Design

    Tucows

    "Sebastian is that rare, mythical generalist everyone hopes to find but few are lucky enough to work with. His standards are uncompromising."

  • Author image

    Cătălin Bocăeț

    Head of Marketing

    EduKiwi

    "Sebastian is many things, chief among them being a nerd. He's a marketing nerd, a tech nerd and a content nerd. He holds himself to high standards and specialises in creating gripping content, to give every reader undeniable value. He's also funny and great to work with. Let's just say I'd trust him enough to have him write my eulogy."

  • Author image

    Cătălin Bocăeț

    Creative Director

    EduKiwi

    "Sebastian is many things, chief among them being a nerd. He's a marketing nerd, a tech nerd and a content nerd. He holds himself to high standards and specialises in creating gripping content, to give every reader undeniable value. He's also funny and great to work with. Let's just say I'd trust him enough to have him write my eulogy."

  • Author image

    Pasi Virta

    Global Brand Director

    Opes Corporation Oy

    "Sebastian cares more for your brand than you probably do yourself. None of the copywriters I've worked with can match his dedication and results."

  • Author image

    Cătălin Bocăeț

    Head of Marketing

    EduKiwi

    "Sebastian is many things, chief among them being a nerd. He's a marketing nerd, a tech nerd and a content nerd. He holds himself to high standards and specialises in creating gripping content, to give every reader undeniable value. He's also funny and great to work with. Let's just say I'd trust him enough to have him write my eulogy."

  • Author image

    Pasi Virta

    Global Brand Director

    Opes Corporation Oy

    "Sebastian cares more for your brand than you probably do yourself. None of the copywriters I've worked with can match his dedication and results."

FAQs

FAQs

How do I know this will work for me?

If you’d rather win arguments than solve problems, you are your brand's biggest betrayal. Just close the tab — I won’t work with you. This is for founders who’ve outgrown tactics and want to invest in a system that makes your brand the only choice. If you understand greatness requires dealing with people — complex systems of psychology, behavior, and perception — book a call.

How is the Coherence Sequence different?

You already know you cannot outperform your identity — if you’re “not an active person,” working out regularly is an incoherent behavior. So you won’t do it. The same is true for your brand. If the identity’s incoherent, it wastes your time, your money, and your best ideas on the wrong people — because you’re not signaling things that create trust with the right people. But most agencies can only give you slick visuals and decks littered with garbage like: "We identified Trustonance™ as the core emotional driver — the intersection of trust and resonance that creates lasting brand affinity." The Coherence Sequence doesn't invent jargon. It finds the specific betrayals pushing your best customers away — and kills them.

So what’s the math?

If you're spending even $50k/month on ads with a 1.5x ROAS — that's $75k revenue on $50k spend. $25k left before payroll, rent, everything else. You're bleeding money. Now, say I 2x your ROAS — that same $50k generates $150k in revenue. An extra $75k/month. $900k/year. Same ad budget. A $14,000 diagnostic that unlocks $900k/year is a 64x return. Even if I only 1.5x your ROAS, that's still $450k/year on a $14k investment. This isn't about what's in the deliverable. It's about what solving the problem is worth to your business.

How much time does it take?

One 60-minute intake call. 48 hours later, you’ll know exactly what’s betraying your brand, and I’ll walk you through how to kill it on a 90-minute call. That's it. I do the excavation. You get the map.

How long does it take to see results?

Results depend on how fast you implement — you get a fully personalized diagnosis specific to your brand. Some founders start fixing betrayals the same day. Others take a month. Fair warning: I've had clients reject the diagnosis because it threatened their ego, then try to blame me when nothing changed. But your current brand identity can only take you so far. If you implement, you get results. If you sit on it, that's on you. The roadmap is prioritized — you'll know exactly what to hit first.

Does this even apply to my niche?

If you're selling to humans, yes. I've seen the same patterns bleed DTC, SaaS, edtech, CPG. Different products, different industries. Same betrayals. People work the same way.

What if you don’t find any betrayals?

I'll give you the first betrayal for free on the intake call. In a decade of doing this, I’ve never seen a brand with zero betrayals. Not once.

Betrayals will cost you everything

Betrayals will cost you everything

You can only coast on the meager profits you squeeze out of customers for so long

Jaguar could have been England's answer to Ferrari

A niche, irrational, taste-driven icon with a tribe that buys because it’s a Jag. Instead of identity calling the shots, spreadsheet-brain told them to chase mass adoption for decades with mid-market scrap. Sales tanked. But then they did the most disastrous thing possible: outsourced the answer to a bunch of film-school rejects LARPing as branding experts. Now Jaguar's hoping you'll forget their 'Copy nothing' rebrand — hoping fans will patiently await attempt #2.

→ You don’t get to position as “ultra-luxury EV” after 50 years of being incoherent.

Volcom joined the army of zombie brands

"Youth Against Establishment." Their motto lasted right up until the establishment gave the founders a fat check. They IPO'd. Sold the brand off to conglomerates and licensing graveyards. Now the homepage is just sales banners. And when the latest operator collapsed in 2025, nothing ended. Because this is what Volcom became: an undead brand for whoever’s next to wear the logo like a skin suit.

→ Founders cashed out. Tribe abandoned. Bankrupt 2025.

Carhartt WIP proves coherence compounds

American workwear DNA — reimagined in Europe by a Swiss founder. No rebrand. No quality compromises. No discounts. No influencer floods. Still private. Still coherent. They didn't chase culture. They stayed themselves long enough that culture came to them. Now they're the uniform for creators, hip-hop heads, ravers, skaters, young parents in Berlin and every other major cultural center worldwide.

→ Founders cashed out. Tribe abandoned. Bankrupt 2025.

Coherence starts at $14,000

Coherence starts at $14,000

And unlike agencies that hand you a slide deck and call it a day, you get my full attention.

And unlike agencies that hand you a slide deck and call it a day, you get my full attention.

Ready to zap your betrayals from orbit?

The Coherence Sequence

Ready to zap your betrayals from orbit?

The Coherence Sequence