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Transcription:
00:26
Hello, welcome back to A Brand Less Ordinary. Today we're going to talk about something that I don't think gets spoken about enough in the branding world or in the business world in general. And it's what actually changes when your brand finally feels like yours.
00:53
There's lots of tips on how to make it look better, how to make it feel better. But what we want to know is what are the things that then actually changes for you in your business when you finally do that thing and you've got something that feels completely like you. Not just when it looks good, not when you've got a nice colour palette and a logo that you don't hate, when it genuinely, properly feels like you and you can feel the difference. Loads of people will come to me having already had a rebrand, sometimes two, sometimes more.
01:22
And they'll say things like, it looked great, I loved it, was really happy with it, but something still felt a bit off. They can't always name what that is. They just knew that it wasn't quite right. It looks great. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Really nice colors, really professional looking graphics, but it doesn't necessarily feel like them. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. The before, the kind of actual shift, and then what is possible on the other side of that. So firstly,
01:51
Have a think and just think to yourself honestly, think about how many of these things feel familiar. It doesn't matter if you get it right or wrong, nobody's listening, you don't have to write it down anywhere, it's not homework. But you have a brand, it exists, you've got colors, you've got a logo, you've got fonts that you use consistently. Technically you're doing all the right things, but every time you go to post something, there's this kind of moment of hesitation.
02:18
like you're not really sure that it sounds right or looks right or looks good enough or if it's you enough. And then you spend twice as long as you should writing all the captions. You're trying to write it in this kind of voice that you think you should have. What you've led to believe is kind of professional for a business owner rather than the one that you actually have inside. Or perhaps, and this is a big one, this is something that a lot of people do. You look at someone else in your industry and you think, yes,
02:48
That's the vibe. That's what I want. I'm going to do a version of that. And then your content starts to look a little bit like theirs and a little bit like someone else's. And suddenly your brand is like this kind of mashup of everybody that you admire and nothing that's actually specifically yours. Now there's no kind of judgment of this. I have done this in the past. We've all done this. We're all guilty of looking at other people's and thinking, oh, I really want what they've got. And then once you change it and you're happy with it, you see someone else's new thing. Oh,
03:18
I could just add a little bit of that in as well. yeah, no judgment at all because loads of people do this, but it is something that's really common in the business world. Or another thing is that perhaps you get a full rebrand done, proper designer, proper process, beautiful things that you're left with at the end. You look at the final result and you think, this is lovely. Yep, I love it. It looks great. And you meant it at the time. It was lovely, but six months later, perhaps you're just not sure that it sounds like you when you write.
03:47
Or when you create those graphics, it doesn't quite feel like something that is really yours. They don't feel like it's a hundred percent come from you. And then you obviously keep using it, but it's like, it's just a kind of a little bit adjacent to what your actual personality is like, rather than being really truly utterly you. And this is all the stuff that no one really warns you about. None of the designers, no branding experts tend to talk about the fact that you can have a beautiful brand.
04:15
that still doesn't fit, it still feels wrong. And when it doesn't fit, you feel it like every time you kind of show up somewhere, every time you create a graphic to post online, it's almost like you've stepped into somebody else's wardrobe, beautiful clothes, they all fit fine, but they don't feel like you, they don't represent your personality. And that is the kind of same feeling that you'd get when your brand doesn't quite fit as well. It's like you're wearing somebody else's clothes.
04:42
And then of course the knock-on effect of that is huge because if you don't feel like your brand is you, you're going to hold back on what you put out there into the world. You will under post as in you kind of not post enough. You'll overthink. You'll hedge all the stuff that you're saying. So you won't quite say the right things that you mean to say. You'll say less than you want to say and you'll play it safer than you need to.
05:07
because you're in that mode of wanting to still look and sound professional instead of look and sound exactly like you because you haven't quite got the brand to match yet. And then you wonder why it's not converting, why you're not selling enough, why you're not getting enough attention and why you're not getting enough engagement. So what is it that needs to change? Now I want to be really clear because I think that a lot of the branding advice can be slightly in the wrong direction here. The answer is not just to make it prettier. It's not just to be more consistent. It's not
05:36
to just use those same couple of colors that you've chosen over and over again. It's not even just to show up more. It's not necessarily to be online more. Of course, all of those things will naturally have a positive effect on your brand overall and getting visible. The shift is that need to make is that your brand needs to come from you, not kind of be wrapped around you, if that makes sense. It's not kind of this like blanket that's just gonna cover up what's already there. You need it to be
06:06
kind of everything about you. And there's a big difference. One is like decoration almost, and the other is the actual identity. And what that means in practice is firstly getting really honest about who you actually are, values, your way of communicating, the things you genuinely believe about your industry, the perspective that you have that other people don't have. Perhaps there's things in your industry you absolutely hate.
06:33
and that's your opinion, but it won't be everybody else's. The way you naturally talk to people when nobody's actually watching you, when you're not filming a video for reels or for your stories, how do you actually talk to your friends or your customers that you know well about your product, your services, your work, your industry in general, and all the things you believe in? And then you build everything on top of that. build everything outwards. So you're going from a...
07:00
an inside out point of view rather than an outside in which is where people look at the kind of aesthetics and all of the customer facing stuff first. You want to be building it from the inside out, not from trends, not for what's working for someone else, not by looking at other people and seeing their engagement and thinking you need to be like them, not from a template that you downloaded, actually from you. And I know that sounds simple and I know that it's not as simple as it sounds because
07:30
Most of us have spent so long being told that there's this right way to do things, there's a right way to write things, a right format to post in, a right time of day to post, a right aesthetic to have. And now we've kind of buried all of that natural instinct that we have where we know what feels right for us. And that's the thing that you need to tap into because often you will know
07:56
the thing that feels right to you, the way to speak that feels right to you, the kind of visuals that you want to create that feel right to you. And you don't have to do those things based on the supposed, whether it's industry standards, as in your specific industry, or whether it's just kind of the wider kind of online business world, the standards that you think you have to have to be able to create content and market your business. So it's less about adding stuff, lots and lots of stuff. It's more about like,
08:25
clearing out the noise. And what you don't want to be confusing that with is the fact that you think that you now need to go and delete everything that you've actually done. You don't need to go and delete everything, change everything. You just need to kind of add the bits that are missing. So you don't need to add loads and loads of stuff that you don't need. You need to just kind of add the things that have been missing from what you have been creating so that you really create something that is truly you. Okay, let's have a look then at what actually changes
08:55
when you do this, what actually shifts when this happens? This is the part that I really love. This is the part that actually gets you results. And the first thing, which is really interesting, is that everything just gets easier. Not in this kind of cheesy way of, just follow your passion and business will feel light and fluffy and really simple and easy. I just mean like practically easier. Content ideas will just come faster because you're not trying to now fit into a format
09:24
that isn't yours. You're not thinking this needs to look like that person's and I need to follow these trends to be able to get results and I need to be able to post on a Monday it has to be a reel and on a Wednesday it has to be a carousel. You get rid of all of those rules. Everything now feels like it's actually just coming from your brain. Just the things that you want to talk about, the things that you think your audience need to know about in order to want to actually book you or buy from you.
09:52
Everything then just takes less time. If you were to record a speaking video, it'd probably just take less time because you're just talking. You're not having to script it. You're not having to overthink it. Just talk like you would talk to a person because your brand voice just needs to be what your voice is like, what your voice is like now, not a version of it that you'd have to construct, create, script, and actually kind of design. You don't need to design it. You don't need to create a character.
10:22
You just need to pull out what's inside you already and get that out into the world. The next thing that happens is inquiries that you get start to feel easier. I know that sounds weird, but what happens is that when your brand is genuinely you and it starts to attract the people that actually kind of really want to work with you and it's based on the real you, not a performance you, the people that get in touch are kind of already
10:52
and pre-filtered. They've already made half the decision. They've self-selected based on the fact that they're actually getting to see you already in your content. And it makes all those conversations, the inquiry-based conversations, totally different. Because instead of spending the first part of a call or an interaction across messages, having to explain yourself or persuade people or kind of over-explain why your prices are that and things like that.
11:22
You don't have to do any of that because they've already come in warm and some of them will come in completely ready to buy because they've already seen everything they need to see within your content and within your brand. And those people that aren't your people, they just kind of wander off and that's fine. In fact, that's more than fine. That is what you want to happen because then you've got less of the convincing that you need to do because you haven't got all these people hanging around that you're never going to be able to help.
11:50
So you've got less awkward conversations and many more of the right conversations of people that actually want to buy something from you. Then the third thing that changes, and this is the one that maybe people just don't expect to happen, is that your confidence completely changes. When your brand feels like you, you stop second guessing yourself, you stop overthinking so much, you don't hover over the post button as much as you used to, you don't redesign that camera graphic 400 times, maybe you take it down to only 100 times.
12:19
but you stop writing something and then deleting it. You stop doing all those things where you start to do something and then think, oh no, I shouldn't post that. And it's not because you've suddenly become this fearless business owner. And remember, I am a bit of an introvert. I used to be really shy. I promise you, fearless is not a thing that I have suddenly become. I still have all of the self-doubt, overthinking and everything like that. But when it comes from you, you feel like you,
12:49
Don't have to kind of prove yourself all the time. It's not like you're performing and then you're worried that you're suddenly gonna slip up because it's just you. You're not trying to create this character of yourself. You're not trying to create this professional image that you think you should have. You're just doing your thing and being yourself. And it completely changes how you show up online, how you show up when you're launching something, how you show up just in your day-to-day content, how you show up when maybe you go to...
13:16
networking events and you have to explain your business and it completely changes what people see. So now here's something else that you can think about. Think about the last time that you landed on the page of somebody new to you. It could be their Instagram page, could be their website, whatever. And within about 30 seconds or even less, maybe you just knew that you wanted to be in their world. You knew that they were your kind of person. You knew that you maybe trusted them. You loved what they said. You
13:46
completely understood their values straight away and you just knew that you wanted to follow them, bookmark their website, know, message them on Instagram perhaps. And you didn't need convincing. You didn't need that chit chat backwards and forwards. You didn't need them to persuade you. You didn't need to read through 17 testimonials, all the detailed frequently asked questions. You just felt it immediately. That doesn't mean you got your credit card out and you immediately went and bought something from them, but you just knew that you wanted to be in their world.
14:15
And that's what I think about as a golf, every single brand that I work on or business owner that I work with at the moment, that instant feeling that yes, this is for me from the very first moment that someone finds you, that's what you want. So that there isn't all this over explaining, overthinking, overcompensating, feeling like you have to tell them why your prices are set like they are and all those things. So you want them to feel that not after they've followed you for three months, not after they've seen
14:44
27 posts over the next few weeks, right away, you just want them to get that feeling. You want them to understand your vibe and feel what it is that you're about. So you've managed to articulate yourself, your feelings, your values, your opinions, so easily through your content and through your brand that they don't need to see very much to be able to really get a sense of who you are. And that's what happens when your brand genuinely comes from who you are, when it's honest about your personality.
15:14
the way you see your industry, the way that you work that's different to other people, that's what starts to happen. And then people aren't trying to figure you out. They aren't trying to work out exactly what it is that you stand for because you've already done that work for them. You've made it really easy to understand whether they're in or they're out once they find you. And like I said before, them being out is just as useful as them being in because if people can self-select and decide, okay,
15:43
Yeah, I understand what this person is talking about and yet they've got some great ideas or whatever, but it's probably just not quite for me. And I also get this all the time. I come across people and I instantly make a decision. And it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with their business, nothing wrong with their branding, nothing wrong with what they sell, nothing wrong particularly with their price point. But you can just tell sometimes when someone's personality completely aligns with you or when sometimes it's just really not your kind of thing.
16:10
even if you agree with the things that they're talking about. So that's what we're building towards. People that are in quickly with very little friction and very little need to persuade them to. And that's what you end up with then, a brand that not just looks good, a brand that actually lands with the right people immediately. And I'm going to be going into that idea deeper next week, specifically how you can make that happen for people who have never heard of you before. So people that come across your Instagram or your website and how you can actually make that happen.
16:40
within a really short amount of time so they really get you and feel you and understand what you're about straight away. So if that sounds something that you need then obviously come back for the next episode. So if you've enjoyed today then I would obviously always be grateful if you would share the episode or tell your friends, send anybody my way, leave a review, all those things that people with podcasts ask for that do genuinely actually help more than you'd think.
17:04
And otherwise, I will look forward to seeing you again back here next week for another episode of A Brand Less Autumny. See you then.