Building A Brand As A Creative (LIVE!)

What's up, everybody? Lennon here. This is the first live that I've done in. I don't know. It's been. I don't know. It's been a while since I've been here. And so I'm trying some new things today. And so we're just gonna have to kind of get used to seeing me twiddle here for a second.

But. Okay, great. I'm good. I've got it. So what I'm trying to do is I kind of reached out, if you're watching this right now, I kind of reached out to you guys that are on my email list just to see what would be valuable to you as far as times to go live. And I've gotten a number of different answers here, and that's totally fine. But. So what I'm doing right now is sort of a test. I've got the nicer camera here set up. I'm trying to, like, see if I can get better audio quality so that I can turn this into potentially a podcast episode or just have it for some extra stuff to put out to those of you guys that aren't able to be here live. Because the times were just sort of all over the place. So it felt like it was a better idea to kind of just go for it, just do the thing and then see what happens. But today, we're talking about building a brand as a creative, and this idea that a brand is not just like a logo and your work and your color schemes and those kinds of things. There's a lot more to building a brand as a creative than you might think. And I'm gonna talk through how I'm thinking about honestly pivoting my brand right now. There's a lot that's been changing. There's a lot where I haven't been here recently. And I just want you to know, like, that's been.

It's been purposeful. I've been doing this for a reason. There's stuff that's going on, and we're going to get into it, and I'm really excited about it. But as of right now, there's a lot of changes that have been happening. And those of you that have been following for a while, you've seen that I started talking about things in a different way. I think this struggle that I've been having is going to be helpful for those of you that are trying to build out your brand more. So what does a good brand do for you? So if you're trying to do things like grow your Social media accounts, you're trying to sell more of your work, you're trying to get more people to hire you. So maybe you're a photographer or a visual artist or a recording engineer or a musician of some kind, you're trying to get people to hire you more for gigs. Then having a great brand is really important, right? And so if you're trying to do any of those things and then some, your brand is important. And the mistakes that I see the most, even for myself in the earlier days, was doing the things that you think you're supposed to do. So give me in the chat, if you feel me on this, give me a thumbs up. But you design your logo, you pick out your color schemes, you come up with a kitschy little catchphrase, and you're like, okay, I've got a brand. The truth is, that is not even close. There's so many things that I've learned about in the last few years.

And I'm so excited to share a few of those things with you. So what we're going to talk about today is sort of how I'm pivoting my brand and then also the five major things that I want you to think about as you're sketching out your brand, as you're trying to put the thing together for the first time. Okay, so we got some people in the chat here, coming in. OM says, hey, OM it's so good to have you here. Good to have those of you that are here. If you have questions as you're watching, please type them in the chat. I'll be getting to those here in a little bit as well. So first thing, who am I? So if you don't know me, my name is Lennon Bone and I am a musician. I spent 15 years touring as a musician. I toured all over the world. Toured for about 15 years. Well, actually toured for about 10 years now. Did about five years as a freelancer, just doing production, songwriting, things like that. Over my time, toured through over 15 countries, got to play Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, do all this kind of stuff, be on a couple Billboard Top 200 records, was very fortunate to work with a Grammy nominee, write a song that made me over like. And I say this out of all humility and as surprised as you are over, like $40,000 in one go. And what that did for me is it made me think about the exact same thing we're going to talk about today, which is, okay, how do I take this now and do something for myself? Everything I've Done has been about helping someone else. And I want to help other people, but I want to help them from the place that I feel fired up about, not from behind the scenes of someone else. And what's ironic is that a lot of my job, I also work for a company called Video Creators. And so. So a lot of my job there is that I help YouTubers actually grow their brand and do that kind of stuff. And so for me, it's kind of ironic to be behind the scenes again. But this brand, for me, this thing here, is all about helping artists and creatives to stand out and start to make money doing work that's meaningful to me. Work that's meaningful can be a lot of different things. It's not just the art that we make. We don't need to necessarily get paid for our art if that comes from, like, a heart place where we don't want to make it just to sell it. But we can totally get paid for the skill sets that we have, that we've developed, that we've built over time through creating these things. And these skills, in some ways, are more valuable than the work that you actually make. And I know that doesn't sound as exciting and romantic as just selling a bunch of your work, and a lot of these brand things will still work to sell your work. But what I'm getting at here is that when you let go of the expectation that your work has to be everything, and you start to understand that you can build something that serves people well and allows you to get more gigs, get hired by other people, get people to pay attention, then it's going to make a difference. And that's what I've been fortunate to do, is build this brand out in a way that got the attention of the people that I work with, now, got me the opportunities to be able to have a handful of you guys here. And as I continue to build, I know that's only going to get stronger because I want to help you guys do the same thing. So what I wanted was to help artists, but why couldn't I do that? It was because I was limiting myself. I knew that music was what I'd been in for years, and so I felt comfortable there. And the thing was, is that I knew that I was about to get stuck in a specific spot. I knew that I would feel unfulfilled by just working with musicians. And the reason is I know that the things that I think about, they work with artists and creatives of all kinds. Right? It's all about the struggle that we have the fear that we have the not valuing ourself enough. So that's my mission, is to help artists and creatives change the way that they see their worth, not just in the work that they create, but in the way that they present themselves, the way that they live their life. Right? And so when I was limiting myself to just musicians, I wasn't allowing myself to really take full advantage of that. And so I had some friends outside of the music space that are creative people, including my wife. She's an awesome illustrator. And so they were like, hey, you know, these ideas that you're talking about, they really fit with me. Can you help me out? And so I did. And so I helped my wife grow her following to over 16,000 people on Instagram. I helped other friends start to monetize their business and put their things together. And they said, lennon, this is not specific to musicians. Any creative person can do this kind of stuff, and it's going to work, so just drop it. And it was the hardest thing that I ever had to do because I had to overcome my insecurities and just trust that the knowledge that I had was. Was enough to help other people. And I want you to hear me when I say that. I'm going to say it again. I had to overcome my insecurities and trust that the knowledge and the skills that I had were enough. And for a lot of you guys, you're not there yet. You're still trying to overcome those insecurities and find out that the knowledge that you have is enough to make it work. Right? And so what happened is.

Fast forward some time. I was able to get this job with video creators, start working with YouTubers, working with people that are building out their stuff on their platform, started working more with people here in my community. And some of you guys may be watching this, and it's like. And you did my course. And that was one of the most exciting things for me ever, because I finally saw some people come in and say, holy cow. Like, this is actually helping. Like, this is what I needed to hear, is that the dream doesn't have to be so limited to the most romantic thing that we've ever seen. We can all of a sudden open up the romance that we have with our art and our creativity and be able to present the world with something that can serve me well and make me more money and do things in that way. And so we got Ingrid here, we got Mary. Good to have you guys here. This is awesome. We got some folks here hanging Out. So, yeah, so glad that you're here. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about this idea of building your brand and how this applies to the way that I've been pivoting my own stuff. So a brand is what somebody says about you when you're not in the room. A brand is what somebody says about you when you're not in the room. It's not what somebody says that your logo looks like it's not. Like, it's not your color schemes. Somebody's not going to come in and be like, man, have you guys followed Lennon? Like, his logo is so dope. I mean, he must be amazing at what he does. Nobody says that. What do they say? They say, here's what Lennon does and here's who it's for. And if they don't understand what I do and who it's for, then they're not gonna be able to succinctly communicate my brand and my identity to their friends. And so here's the biggest thing that I hear artists and creatives say is they say they'll say things like, how I hear this all the time. Oh, my work speaks for itself. I'm just letting the work speak for itself. And I just wanna tell you that is the biggest pet peeve that I have when it comes to assuming something like, forgive me, but that's such a pompous statement to some degree, is to assume that your work speaks for itself. And here's what I mean by that. Let's say you're a musician, right? And you make incredible songs. How does somebody discover that music? Well, somebody discovers that music through somebody coming up to them and saying, hey, have you listened to this yet? Like, this is really good. I think you would really like it. That's not your work speaking for itself. As a matter of fact, that's someone else speaking on behalf of your work, right? If you look at any big time creative people, artists, entrepreneurs in the space, big time musicians, producers, whatever, it's so important that you understand, like, these people have somebody out there that has built a brand for them and is telling the story of who they are. Whether you believe it or not, they're telling who it's for as well.

I just don't believe that your work speaks for itself. I think somebody has to speak on behalf of your work. And in a lot of instances, the only person that's going to do that is you. Because the only person that believes in the thing that you do as much as you do is yourself. And there's nothing wrong with that. To start. Okay, so make sure you guys are thinking about this in terms of your work doesn't speak for itself. You have to start to speak on behalf of the work that you do. Okay? So here's what I want you to think about. First things first. Start with why you do what you do, okay? Is it to build clients? Is it to get somebody to hire you? Is it to sell your work? Right? And these are the biggest three things that I get from people in my community.

Is that they either want to get noticed by somebody that would want to hire them out. So in my instance, when I was doing freelance work as a producer, then it was all about like, hey, I want to get. Yeah, I want to get more people to hire me to make their records, right? But the thing that changed.

Is that I had to go out and say that. Like, I had to let people know, oh, this is why I do this. I don't make music in a studio or in my room or in wherever I'm at to, like, just make it, because they didn't know that they even had the opportunity to work with me until I let them know why I did what I did. Right? And so if that's your idea of, like, you know, getting someone else, getting hired at a studio, getting hired as an apprentice, getting put somewhere, getting more gigs as a photographer, getting more freelance filmmaking gigs, like, whatever it is that you do, you have to remember that you start with why you do what you do. Simon Sinek.

Has a great TED Talk called Start with why. And I would highly recommend that you guys go check it out. And then not only like, why are you doing it, but what's the deeper why? What's the level beneath that where you're saying, I'm not doing this just to get clients, but I'm doing this because I want to get clients and I want to make money so that I can serve my family better. I want to be able to make a living to where I can actually employ people and bless them with money and do the thing that I love to do, right? And so digging deep. That's number one. Start with why you do what you do. The, like, surface level, why? And then the deeper level, why? What's the driver? Because there's going to come points where you just don't want to keep doing it. And this will give you that extra oomph to say, okay, yeah, I got to keep going, because this is my why. This is the thing that drives me. This is the second thing I Want you to think about is who do you do this for? Figure out who you do it for. Okay? So I think that's the biggest. The biggest thing that a lot of artists just don't think about is like, oh, I just want to do it for everybody. And whoever likes it, likes it. I had a client here.

Who I was talking with, and she said. I just asked her, what do you want? What are you doing this for? What are you doing for people? And she said, well, I just want people to be happy. And I was like, well, why do they? What's keeping them from being happy? And she's like, well, doesn't everybody just want to be happy? And I'm like, well, yeah, but that's just for different reasons. Like, why the thing that makes me happy is different from the thing that makes you happy. It's different from the thing that makes someone else out there happy. Like, I'm happy when I get to do creative things and get to work with creative people. Someone else is happy when they're out, you know, shooting an 80 in their golf game. Someone else is happy when they're out drinking a bunch of beer. Like, whatever it is that, like, makes them happy is going to be different. So if you can't identify that and speak to that, then you're going to have problems getting people to pay attention. So define who it is that you do it for, then. Define what you do. So now that you understand, like, why you do it and you understand who it's for, you, you can then position what you do a little more clearly. I just find that when I say things, when I say.

The thing that I say in every video, which is, I'm here to help artists and creatives stand out and make money doing meaningful work. I know that a you know who it's for. Artists and creatives. You know why I do it because I want them to be able to make meaningful work. I know why they do it. They want to make meaningful work. Something that.

Just digs deeper into the heart of things. You know what I mean? That's the thing that we're looking for here, is understanding who we're doing it for and then defining what you do. Then the fourth thing is define who you are then as a person and. And as a creative. So I get frustrated because I'll look at a lot of people's stuff. This was me, guys.

You ever heard the saying that you get frustrated at something that you see because it's just a mirror reflection where.

You'Re just like, yeah, I'M frustrated because I know that I've done that like a million times.

That's why this idea of seeing people just put work out there, posting a cool photo, posting their artwork, posting a song, putting out there that they have a show coming up. And that's drives me crazy now, because.

You'Re not giving anybody any context. You're assuming that everybody understands everything that's going on, and that's a big, big deal. Like, context is huge. When we think about ourselves as creatives and we think. Well, I'll say it this way, if you're a fan of the Beatles at all, I would argue that. I believe one of the reasons that their legacy, their lore, has existed for as long as it has is because there are so many of these stories of who they were as people, who they were as creatives. Like, there's all these extra things that happen that just live beyond, like, them existing as the Beatles and continuing to make music. Right. I don't know of any other bands or any other musical artists that have that kind of idea. I think the same thing about someone like Picasso or somebody that's doing these different things or anybody that's doing really abstract art. It really comes down to understanding who they were as a person and as a creative so that we could then identify ourselves with the work that they did. It was not just the work that made it cool. It was the story beneath that thing. It was the thing that got us pumped to say, that person might be a freak.

All my favorites. I'm like, that person might be clinically insane. And I think that's why I love them. You know what I mean? When I think about creatives in this way, it lights me up. And so I want you to get past. I'm going to say it this way. I want you to get past this insecurity of you're not cool enough. You don't have enough inside you to be able to talk about yourself that way, because that's complete, like, bs. Okay? I want you to know that you like what you think about yourself and what other people. I'll say this. What other people think about you is none of your business. That's one of the best things that I ever heard somebody say. It changed. It's the reason that I do this now. Like, three years ago, when I was worried about what everybody was gonna say about me putting out content that was gonna hopefully motivate and inspire people to do the things they love to do, all I could think about is, what's the cool kids gonna say whenever they show up and they're like, Lennon's on YouTube, like, what? Like, what a POS. You know, and. And then I had that moment where I heard that phrase of.

What other people think about you is none of your business. And it completely changed everything that, like, the way I approached everything. So I just learned, okay, define who I am as a person, as a creative. And so as I'm, like, pivoting stuff, I've had to change my own story a little bit. My story hasn't changed, but the way I tell it has changed a little bit. So when you think about my brand, and it's still a big part of me to say, you know, I was a musician. I toured for, you know, 10 years, spent five years doing production and songwriting, gigging, freelancing, doing all those things, that's still a part of it. But the thing that I'm now telling as well is this idea of, like, how I started to really obsess over helping creative people, because those people need to understand why it's so important to me. If I just said the first part of my story, but didn't talk about how I transition into this place of wanting to work with them and wanting to be a part of helping them grow and define things, like, then it just doesn't tie together, right? It's just a little bitty piece and it doesn't make sense. Right? It's that spotlight effect. Somebody. Oh, yeah. So Kyle's here. Kyle, good to have you here, my friend. A good talk always makes it feel like you're being personally attacked.

Kieran, is he talking about me? Oh, sorry, guys. Yeah. No. Nine times out of ten, I'm just talking about myself, and I just position it as someone else just to make myself feel better.

Anyway, going back, just to recap, I want you to start with why you do what you do. Figure out who you do it for, then define what you do, and then go deeper and define who you are as a person and as a creative. And then I want you to communicate all of these things really clearly in your content, in your branding, anything that tells your story. If you're trying to sell something, if you're trying to. If you're doing emails, like, whatever it is, don't assume that people know. Nine times out of ten, they don't know. And if you're worried that they're going to get tired of hearing it, I'm just going to tell you that they're not. Okay. They're not going to get tired of it. We Love feeling like we're in the know. We love, like, being a part of something that feels comfortable. And so, yeah, don't feel like somebody's just going to get tired of you because you're saying the same thing. Same thing goes with promotion. Like, as you're selling your work and you're putting stuff out there, you're selling your creative skill sets. Don't get caught up in the lie that, okay, well, I put it out once and nobody bought anything.

Just because you put it out once and nobody bought doesn't mean squat. Like, nine times out of ten, you just haven't pushed them enough to let them understand why they need to buy it. What's the thing that you're going to do to help them? I think having this clarity in your brand and really helping people understand what, what you do, who it's for, why you do it, and those kinds of things are really going to help position your work to be more enjoyable. Because now, just like we talked about with the Beatles, you have something that you're connecting this work to. The work now has a story. The work now has something that fits our life, too. I heard Donald Miller say it this way the other day on his podcast. He said if you told somebody they had a hundred percent chance dying if they went out into the woods.

And then you told them a story about them, about someone else that went into the woods and found a princess and, like, brought her back and they were lived happily ever after, they would still go into the woods. Because there's something about this story, this belief, this thing that we have over here that like, supersedes fact, you know? So we want. We want these things to tie ourselves to. We want to tie ourselves to a story, to an idea, to a belief system, those kinds of things. So think about these things as you're building your brand. Communicate them clearly. I hope that this has been helpful. I'll open up the box here for any questions that we have and kind of see what's been going on in the chat for a second.

Cool. Yeah. Ingrid. Simply Beth.

Yeah, cool. Good to have you guys here. When asked to choose the most attractive face from a group, familiarity is the number one attribute guiding people's choice. When asked to choose the most attractive face from a group, familiarity is the number one attribute guiding people's choice. Man, that's awesome. That is so true. That is so true. Ingrid says. So true. I am my own worst enemy. Those little gremlins that sit on your shoulder and put up roadblocks, keeping us stuck in the past and for moving forward, I got to remember this. Yeah. I got to say, like, I almost didn't do this today.

For that very reason. Right. So that was the big problem is that, like, you know, we. I had all these little voices in my head that was like, okay, you know, this isn't working. I don't understand. Like, I gotta just shut it down. But I had to get on here and do it.

Very helpful. Thank you, Tiffany. How to expand one branch to others if we have our own money to spend. So. No, never. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by expand one branch to others? Like, are you saying that you want to.

You already have.

Sorry, are you saying you already have a brand that you would like to do? Just give me some more insight on that.

Ohm says, would you say that your logo, banner, etc. Needs to highlight these things? Yes, to some degree. So I would say that your logo, your banner, and those kinds of things should identify to this. Right. So if you have a place that you can succinctly tell what you do and who it's for, showcase that. I think that's a good way to do it.

But otherwise, I think the content that you put out, what people do is they tend to go in and they'll see something and they'll kind of stalk you and do those kinds of things. They want to take a few seconds and just see. So I think it's more important that if somebody goes in and looks at your Instagram page or your YouTube channel or your Facebook page, and they see all of these little pieces of your brand kind of meshing together, and it's really simple for them to understand who it's for and what it does, then I think it'd be fine.

So Mary says, question. I used to brand myself with a phrase from a viewer, the love child of Charles Kuralt and Lucille Ball. I feel like that sums up exactly who I want to be, but felt pretend pretentious, so I dropped it. How do we confidently step into the clarity that you're talking about? I don't know that confidence comes until we just execute. I think the thing that I've learned over and over again for me is that.

For everything that I've done, when I talk about these weird little things that have helped me in my life, these weird, monumental moments that, for me have defined my career, so to speak, they all came from a place of really being uncomfortable and just being like, okay, I'm just gonna roll in and say, this is what I do. This is what I'm all about. And I'm just gonna, like, step in and do that. And that's when the payoff happened. But we have to understand that, like, nobody else is going.

I think most people don't see us as pretentious unless we come across as pretentious in multiple ways. Confidence and ego are like two completely separate things. I think you can be confident in who you are and not be egotistical to some degree. I think there can be a little bit of a gray area between those two. And confidence, I think, is just built by executing, assuming that you know it's not going to fail and then saying, well, if it does, I still know that that failure taught me something and I'm okay with that. So I can step back and take another step in that same direction. So unless you hear it from multiple people saying, like, wow, that seems really pretentious, then I wouldn't even worry about it. I think it's more in that kind of stuff. Simply Beth. I just watched a video called 14 Ways to Create an Iconic Brand and Business from Philip Van Dusen. It was really straightforward and super helpful for focusing. Confidence is everything. Yeah. So I. Yeah. So simply Beth, that's awesome. I'll have to go check that out. If you have it, would you link it in the chat? That would be amazing. Cool. So nonever, I wish I could help you if you're talking about. So I'll repeat Nonever's question and kind of talk about what I think they might mean. So how do you expand one branch to others and if we have money to spend? So maybe this idea has to do with advertisement. I want to talk about this for a second. The thing that I'm getting really frustrated about right now and a problem that I'm seeing is that most people are selling others on this idea of Facebook ads and putting your art out there through advertisements. Like, that's the thing you need to do. You need to do that to get in front of people. That's the way you're going to make this work. And here's what I'm going to tell you. If you can't get people to organically connect, then your ads aren't going to play the way that you want them to. It's just not possible. Because if you can't organically get somebody to care, when you force yourself in front of this person and say, you need to like me because I did this, then it's just not going to play out well again. I've done it so believe me when I say it's a waste of money. Spend your time and effort learning about how to develop your brand more clearly. Learn about how to better showcase the value that you offer. And so if you haven't already, I do have an ebook. The link for it is in the description below. So please go check that out.

You can download it. It goes over this idea of value, like, what are values and. And what makes your work, what separates your work from just being good to actually being valuable. Right? And that's a big differentiator here. So if you're trying to run ads and do those kinds of things, you can't just have good work. You have to understand why that work is valuable to somebody. So I would suggest going and checking out the ebook. It's free. It takes about 20 minutes to do. It, comes in audio form, so you can go look at that if you want to and check it out. I think that'd be a great place to start, and I hope that that's helpful. So until you feel like you got your brand locked in, don't spend money on ads. Get the organic stuff going. Feel good about it.

Cool. All right, guys. Well, I want to say thank you so much for watching, listening, and just being a part of this. So I'm not sure, again, how I'm going to distribute this yet. Maybe it ends up being a podcast, maybe not. But I'm just trying to put some more things out there that. That I hope will be helpful to you as artists and creatives. And what I want to remind you of something that I really believe is that when you're leaning in to the thing that you know you're meant to do, then it's all going to be rigged in your favor. I really do believe that. Does that mean that we will not have hiccups? Absolutely not. Does that mean that, you know, things are going to be just easy all the time? No way. But those perceived failures, which aren't actually failures, like, failure doesn't exist unless we put that title to it. It's not a tangible thing that we can hold on. But until we, like, understand that those failures are just opportunities for us to learn the next thing that gets us to where we want to go, then we're going to always be living in that place of just not moving forward. And so I hope that you guys can embrace that. And just remember that when you're leaning into yourself and trusting yourself, it's all going to be rigged in your favor. All right, Sending you guys lots of love. Thank you so, so much for being here. And I'll talk to you next.