Dr. Zac Watkins of Platform Health On Branding, Identity, and the Hard Work of Starting Again

This was not my first conversation with Dr. Zac Watkins, but maybe the most intimate one we’ve ever had.  In my experience, that’s pretty par for the course when talking about big goals and dreams. 

Dr. Zac is the founder of the LiveWell Clinic in Iowa and creator of Platform Health, a revolutionary new online resource for people seeking the best in functional medicine.              

“This is all started because we wanted to expand our reach,” Dr. Zac tells me a week ago over Zoom.  

I was in my office in Denver, and Dr. Zac was in his clinic in Des Moines, Iowa.  As he shifts his weight from foot to foot, bristling with energy, I’m reminded that Dr. Zac embodies many of the things we at CultureCraft look for in a client: he’s passionate, well-spoken, and deeply committed to the process of building a great product and successful business. 

I’ve asked him to talk to me a little bit about how he got involved with CultureCraft and what led him to realize that he needed help in launching Platform Health over a year ago.  He tells me that he was dreaming a lot back then.  And that’s what he was doing when he ran into the first road-block while thinking of expanding his clinic, LiveWell, into something that would be accessible to people online. 

 “Our bigger picture vision wasn’t aligning with where we were at.  And that’s when I started meeting with Nick and figuring out what we wanted, and what we wanted to look like.  I remembered thinking, ‘Well if we want to do these bigger picture things, we’re gonna have to make some adjustments and change ourselves to align with these new bigger goals.’  But when I first started, I thought we’d just come up with a cool name and open a door to do more business.”  

Dr. Zac is immensely transparent on this point – that what plagued him, and often plagues business owners trying to build a new brand, is the myopic view of what the branding or rebranding will change.  Maybe said another way, many business owners believe they can change how they look without changing who they are.  And this simply isn’t the way to growth.

 “We didn’t know our messaging.  When patients would ask ‘what do you do’ we would give them some fancy answers but I’d look around and say ‘we don’t know what we do!’”

The Branding Begins Here

 When building a new brand or helping a company rebrand, identity is often the starting point for us at CultureCraft.  We have to, first and foremost, get aligned on how a company sees itself, before we can reorient how a potential client or customer sees them.  So often, we find a disconnect between how a prospective customer sees the brand, and how the brand sees itself.  And this disconnect can cripple both brand and customer.

 In Dr. Zac’s case, he realized that understanding who Platform Health was, and what they did, was the first step.  

Branding The Future

Toward the end of our conversation, we ended up talking about the shifting nature of the commercial world.  Dr. Zac sees the last year and a half of the COVID epidemic as a series of shifting and crumbling surfaces.  But soon people will emerge from it and look for people or companies to trust.  

 “I think people are gonna look around and go ‘whose left that I can go to?’  And most of my colleagues have given up.  Now’s the time to get better.”  

For anyone considering launching a new brand or changing an old one, Dr. Zac’s words could not be more urgent and important.  What we’re seeing is that people have spent the last year keeping their heads down and yearning for connection, newness, and value.  

 Now, on the precipice of the world opening back up again, the need for brands who combine a great product, with an understanding of client, and the branding to match, is higher than ever.  

 At CultureCraft, we believe it’s a great time to be obsessed with branding that subverts the commonplace and builds something toward the common good.  That’s the kind of work we sought to accomplish with Platform Health, and it’s the kind of work we strive to achieve with others too.  

 A big thanks to Dr. Zac for letting us interview him for this issue of MADE.  If you’re looking for the very best in functional medicine and supplemental care, you can click here to get acquainted with Platform Health and their incredible work.   

Curious how CultureCraft might help you get better?  Click here to book a consultation with us