Build a Bold and Profitable Personal Brand
Your brand (podcast and business) is more than just a logo, fonts and colors. It should help you attract and convert.
Today I chat with Be Bold Branding Podcast hosts and Brandface owners Tonya Eberhart and Michael Carr who are international selling authors, hosts of the Be Bold Branding Podcast and the creators of the most comprehensive personal brand-building system in the world: BrandFace®.
They deep dive into what branding truly is, how to create a successful brand that will help you stand out so you can charge more while spending less on marketing. Let’s take a listen.
Lessons Tonya and Michael Have Learned During Their Podcasting Journey
- Tonya and Michael have been podcasting for over 4 years now. The first thing they learned is that they really sucked at the beginning of their podcasting journey!
- They removed their first episodes because of how bad the audio quality was.
- In the early stages, Tonya and Michael noticed that people weren’t buying their program because they were unsure about and felt a little intimidated by branding. They weren’t ready.
- Michael recommends not worrying about it too much and just doing it because nobody cares until they care. Focus on working on your craft.
How Podcasting Has Impacted BrandFace
- The first thing having a podcast has done for BrandFace is help position Tonya and Michael as greater experts on the topic of personal branding.
- Additionally, podcasting has enabled BrandFace to educate people on the fact that a brand is much more than just a logo, a photo and a tagline, as well as handle objections before someone hops on a sales call with their team.
- Moreover, thanks to podcasting, Tonya and Michael have been able to make some great connections with other professionals all over the world.
- Many industries are just cut-throat, dog eat dog kind of industries… but not the podcasting space – and that’s something Michael and Tonya really like! #KindnessPrevails
- Everyone is helping each other because everybody needs each other. A podcast host needs good guests, and guests need good hosts to interview them.
What Personal Branding is All About
Tonya: “Personal branding is an entire ecosystem made of what makes you you: your professional attributes, your personal attributes, the ways you market yourself, etc.”
- When personally branding somebody, BrandFace looks at 77 different criteria.
- Tonya shares that there’s a lot of confusion between branding and marketing.
- They define marketing as “utilizing different marketing platforms and channels to get a message and image out to your ideal customer.”
- Your brand, on the other hand, is that message and image that you’re inserting into those marketing platforms and channels.
- A couple of key questions to ask yourself are “Am I using the various platforms differently?” and “Am I coming across as unique on those platforms?”
The Connection Between Your Brand and Your Podcast
- Michael believes that your podcast and personal brand should match.
- A mistake Michael has seen many people make is wanting a brand for the various verticals they may have, like a podcast, a book, a program, etc.
- But, actually, that’s a mistake because you are the brand. All the things you do should tie back to that common denominator: you.
Utilizing So-Called Attraction Assets
- At BrandFace, they label a podcast you may host, a book you may have written, a site you may have, and any other lead generation and credibility tool you do and have as attraction assets.
- According to Tonya, you need to have the 3 As: Attraction – Assets – Alignment.
Getting Started With Building a Brand
- The beginning of the brand-building process focuses on a couple of key concepts.
- The first is to consider your point of differentiation. What makes you unique about you – and that nobody else can offer?
- Then, think about who you’re targeting: who’s your ideal client?
- Remember, you can’t serve everybody. If you try to help everyone you’ll just help yourself right out of business.
- Tonya explains that it’s about aligning the different things that make you unique with who you’re trying to reach.
- What do your ideal clients need to hear? And how should you approach them? Once you have clarity on this, your offers and attraction will be much easier to align.
- Sometimes, we’re our worst enemy because we don’t want to come across as arrogant nor want the brand to be all about us…
- It isn’t about putting your face out there in an arrogant way, it’s about putting your face out there because you have had an experience that’s going to help somebody else.
- Remember: people don’t do business with a logo, they do business with a person.
Elements of a Magnetic Personal Brand
- There are 5 critical questions you should ask to create a magnetic personal brand:
- Who do you serve?
- How do you serve them?
- What qualifies you to serve them?
- How does it make their life better?
- What makes you different from everyone else in your space who’s also trying to serve the same customer?
- Everything that you build with your brand needs to reflect the answers to those 5 questions.
- The process of building a magnetic personal brand is made of three steps: Define, Develop, and Display.
- The Define phase focuses on really understanding who your ideal client is and what marketing hook you’d like to use and be known for.
- In the Develop part of the process, the attention is on developing everything out: your bio, your elevator pitch, your imagery, your logo, everything.
- During the Display phase, you want to focus on displaying everything that has been defined and developed correctly and consistently across everything you do, marketing platforms included.
Common Branding Mistakes
- One of the mistakes Michael has seen people make is niching down to just one brand identifier and thinking that it will explain everything. It won’t but it should explain enough to get someone stopped.
- Lack of consistency with infusing their brand in everything they do is another common personal branding mistake.
- Michael says that “you can’t calculate the cost of confusion.”
- Tonya brings up the common misconception of brand-building being something that takes time. For her, it isn’t time but exposures that makes a brand successful.
- At BrandFace, they have seen people having success with just one or a couple of exposures.
Using Branding to Raise Your Rates
- On average, the BrandFace team has helped their clients raise their rates by about 60%.
- Think about doctors: you pay a certain amount to be seen by a general practitioner but you’ll pay three times that to be seen by a specialist, like a kidney specialist.
- Consider the outcome you’re trying to achieve for your customers – what transformation are you offering?
- Michael points out that, oftentimes, people don’t rise to what they’re worth, they fall to what they believe their crowd can afford.
- An important point to reflect on is choosing who you want to work with. There’s abundance everywhere so don’t focus on booking meetings, meetings, and more meetings, but focus on attracting the clients you really would like to do business with.
- Tonya and Michael focus less on their calendar and more on their brand.
ABOUT TONYA AND MICHAEL
Tonya Eberhart and Michael Carr are international bestselling authors, hosts of the Be Bold Branding Podcast and partners in BrandFace®, the most comprehensive personal brand building system across the globe. They have helped and inspired thousands of Coaches, Consultants and Creators to define, develop, and display a stand-out personal brand so they can attract, convert and charge more for their services while spending less on their marketing. Their mantra is “People don’t do business with a logo. They do business with a person.”
Resources mentioned:
BrandFaceGuide.com (download the guide to help you build a more profitable personal brand)
Grab Your Free Gift!
Launch, Produce Or Leverage YOUR Podcast With The Partnership of Smooth Business Podcasting
What if you could record a podcast and have a team of experts handle it ALL (and have less stress, and more time to focus on your business)?
What if you had a system that enabled you to produce and promote your podcasting content like clockwork without the headaches?
What if your podcast guesting/show brought you more leads and clients?
What if you had ONE company that did it all and you spent less time project managing team members and the moving parts that go with podcasting?
You CAN – We launch, produce, promote and leverage podcasts to help businesses like you gain more leads, increase visibility, boost authority and grow. Email us at info@smoothbusinessgrowth.com!
