The Magic Brand Formula

So today's episode is another entrepreneurs school one on one where we have a bit of a crash course on a topic, and today that is branding, I'm going to walk you through my magic brand formula, talk to you about the bigger picture of your brand that you need to think about. That'll help guide everything that you are doing that feels like treading water, when it comes to your marketing plan, figuring out content to create all of the things it will help solve the confusion, the what should I be talking about? The Who am I talking to the Who am I even in this business? That's all we're gonna talk about today. In this episode, I'm excited for you to dive in.

This is The Entrepreneur School Podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business, while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to Entrepreneur School.

So let's talk about why knowing your brand is the foundation to everything you do in your business. When you're connected to your brand, and you know who it serves, you will be more confident to make more sales, and more easily make decisions. So I'm super excited to dive in today to one of my favorite topics, which is branding, and share with you my magic brand formula that I developed to help you understand what the core pieces are that you need to understand about your brand. Before you go out and start creating content, building a website, figuring out what your marketing strategy is even getting your logo designed. This is the stuff that a good graphic designer is actually going to ask you about when we work with clients to develop visual brands. We talk about the bigger vision, the brand strategy behind what it is that you're creating, you can do the quick and easy Do It Yourself logo version. But it might not relate back to exactly what it is that you're trying to achieve the bigger vision for what your brand is all about. But we'll talk about that in another episode. So I'm just wanting to anchor in there as a starting point. Why this is really important to pay attention to. So let me share my magic brand formula developed by me your very brand mother, it goes like this, your brand equals who you are plus, who you're for, plus why it matters, I'm going to break down all of those pieces. But I first want to let you know that the key to this formula is actually the order of all of the parts, the order really allows you to create your brand from the inside out. And that's what makes it feel more authentic, both to you and to your clients. So let's break them down.

The first part is understanding who you are. So naturally, you can understand that this is deep work. It's deep evolving work. And we did an exercise and episode three, called seven levels deep, which is really helpful as part of this process. And if you haven't listened, I'd encourage you to go back to that one at some point as well. More pieces of who you are include things like your values, what you stand for understanding and uncovering your secret sauce, which is your particular mix of the experience that you have, what you're really good at, and what you're super passionate about. And that's sort of the way that you do what you do that makes you stand out from your competitors who are maybe in similar fields. Your personality is huge here. You will definitely see this represented in everything that I do you want. I want to showcase like a bold, bright, fun personality. Pretty much all of my photos involve confetti or bubbly in some way shape or form. So that's really part of knowing what my brand is too. And then the other piece of the who you are is understanding your story. So the number one thing I want you to remember here is that you are the only you you are 100% unique from your DNA to what you went through in your life to where you were raised to what your career path was how you ended up on this entrepreneurial journey, all of those things.

So part number two of the magic brand formula is who you are for. I have always loved this quote from Marie Forleo. She says, You can't reach everyone, you can't please everyone, and you're not compatible with everyone. Oh, isn't that so true, you are not for everybody. And it is important to recognize that even as people pleasers like we tend to be, especially as women, and as moms who are used to sort of putting ourselves last, when it comes to everything, when it comes to your business, knowing that you're not going to be for everyone is really important. So that helps you to really dig into who you in fact, are for, I want to share one other great resource on this topic. And that's Simon Sinek. And he said something to the effect of that you don't want to do business with people who want what you have. But you want to do business with people who value what you value. So being able to pull back the layers and understand that, that makes it so much easier even think about just a friendship relationship, you're immediately going to get along better with somebody who shares the same values as you. And that definitely applies to understanding your ideal clients, when it comes to your business.

Hey, I just want to pop in for a second and chat with you a little bit about content creation, you know, that thing that you know, that you're supposed to do in order to get visibility, and find clients online? And you know, you're just not finding time to actually do that thing? Because it can be overwhelming to think about, what am I supposed to write? What video should I be sharing? Where am I going to have the time to make all of the beautiful graphics that go along with having a lovely Instagram page, all of the things? Well, I made for you a tool called The Simplified Content System. And inside of this, you're gonna find exactly what I use to be able to plan and create all of my content in an hour a week. So it's a calendar that you can edit, that you can put in what you're doing, where for any kind of platforms, whether you're using Instagram, other social medias, whether you're doing email marketing, whether you're on YouTube, all of it can go in one place that links nicely to this beautiful caption document. And I've also created a number of trainings and templates for you to make it even easier to get your content out and into the world. So that you can be seen, so that you can get clients and so that you still have time to go to all of your kids sports activities. Okay, so you can grab it at entrepreneurschool.ca/content.

So I have to share a story here, about my own personal fears. And what I hear a lot when I'm working with clients, through this ideal client process of figuring out who you are, is that we're scared to niche down, right? Niche niche, wherever you're from. I'm Canadian, so I'm niche. Okay. So niching down seems scary, because we think, well, that's going to, you know, eliminate my ability to help certain people, it's going to prevent my ability to make more money, because I'm gonna have a smaller pool of people. Or, you know, I just want to be able to help everyone because everyone really could benefit from what it is that I do. And that's true, especially in like, you know, the wellness field, if you're doing something with holistic wellness, say, even if you're a personal trainer, or nutrition coach or something like that, of course, everyone could benefit from what you're doing. However, not everyone is actually ready for what you do. Not everyone wants that you can't make somebody want to change their health habits or their eating habits, they have to already want that. So understanding, you know, where they are aligned to their piece around narrowing your niche actually results in expanding your ability to get potential clients. And that's because you're going to start talking to them in a way that they really connect with that they they know that you understand them. They know that you are you have a similar story that you're really for them and that gives them the confidence to actually invest in whatever it is that you are offering to them. So I go really deep into this inside of my program brand message mastery. There's a whole section on ideal client and we could do another podcast episode about this, but I just want to give you that like, overall framework of why it's important to niche down know who you're for, accept who you're not for, and be okay with it, which is an important exercise to go through for yourself, especially again, as a people pleaser, which I'm also guilty of doing.

So the third part of the magic brand formula is why it matters. And this is really the messaging piece. So this is that head nodding, she gets me kind of messaging, you know, you found yourself doing when you're reading a sales page for something that you want to buy, when you are hearing from somebody who's really just speaking your language. Right? Often, when your ideal client is a previous version of you. This just means thinking back to when you're in their shoes, and painting the picture of how you move from where they are, to where you are now. And of course, how you can be the guide to show them how to do the same. So that's think about you, as the personal trainer, what was your experience in getting into health and fitness? What were some of the objections that you had around whether or not you could actually, you know, start adopting these habits? What kind of path did you take, that you can share online as part of your content as part of your sales copy that would help somebody see the journey and see themselves in your shoes as well. Part of understanding the why it matters is also to help you make offers that align with solving the main problem that your client has. So you want to make sure that you're actually creating you know, packages, service offerings, digital products, whatever it is that you do, that address where your client is at that address where your client wants to go, that's more about them and less about you and being able to then communicate all of that in copywriting. So messaging copywriting, this is this is the actual words that you put on the page, the message, the script that you say, when you are talking on a podcast, when you're making a video, whatever it is, that's what you need to understand around the messaging piece. And it's super important to paint that picture of aspiration that they have, and then position yourself as the way for them to get it. So you know where they're at, you know, where they want to go, you know how they can get their sign up here. That's what they want.

So to recap, the magic brand formula, who you are plus who you're for, plus why it matters equals your unique, beautiful, completely 100%, you grant. Now, I want to put a caveat on this and help you notice that, of course, as humans, as business owners, as time goes by, we are constantly growing and evolving as people. So the same will go for your brand. And it's important that you look at it that way. Because we can think about our brands with some vision of the future, and know that it might shift, but there's a need to take stock too, of where your brand is right now. Just put it out there, and then let it grow. So instead of like worrying about where's it gonna go, how am I going to, you know, position it and thinking too far out into the future that can get you stalled. Just think about a little bit of a vision and just allow it to go out. And to grow up. It's okay, we expect things to change. And you should expect your brand to change to, I want you to know in the first five years of my business, I rebranded three times, which might be a lot, but it's something that I absolutely love helping my clients with as well. So if you're interested in chatting about brand strategy, we do VIP days, just send me an email or DM on Instagram and I can let you know what that would look like. So I hope that you enjoyed this crash course in branding as one of my favorite topics and I am sure that we are going to talk about it a lot on this podcast. Thank you for being here. I can't wait to chat again soon.