EP 309 The Power of the Personal Brand at Scale

Hello and welcome to another episode of her Empire Builder show. I am your host, Tina Tower, and I am so excited to be with you here today. Talking about one of my favorite things, which is personal brand at scale. Now, the reason I say personal brand is one of my favorite things. I will caveat by saying I am an introvert at heart. I love to just work behind my computer all by myself and could do so very, very happily. But why I say personal brand is one of my favor things is it's not that I necessarily enjoy the amount of visibility that we need to have in order to be successful, but why I love it so much is because it is the most leveraged, scalable thing I have ever come across in business. So just to take you back to the very beginning of when my journey started with personal brand. I had a toy store and a tutoring center that I opened when I was 20. So back in 2004, and a lot of the advertising we did then was we would place an ad in the newspaper and the ad was $700. So huge in terms of outlay, when you're doing that kind of every two weeks. The other thing I do was, you know, I'd walk out on the street and I would hand out flyers to people. Going past, like, that was my definition of getting your hustle on. And then what I discovered was you could do it with personal brand for free. And so what I started doing was going, all right, how can I get myself in front of people without having to pay it and without having to do so much legwork? How can I make it more leveraged? And that is where I discovered building a personal brand. And so what I have found over since, you know, nearly 21 years in business that I have been now is personal brand will stay with you. It can go through many different businesses. I have built and sold four different companies. I've had a lot of businesses in between that I haven't been able to build and sell. That didn't work out, but I've enabled it, like carry my personal brand all the way through. And that has been an evolution. When you think about personal brand, I want you to remember that, that people buy from people. Humans do business with humans. Personal brand is not about your logo. It's not about your colors. It's not about your funnels. You are the brand. And that is one thing that I think business owners either embrace or they really repel from. And I have seen people still be able to build incredibly fantastic businesses without personal brand. So I'm not going to tell you that personal brand is the only way to be able to build a business. Because, you know, I've got my. My friend Tricia, for example, doesn't like being front and center, but she puts all her team front and center. She does a lot of social media, a lot of marketing, but it's all of her team. So there's not like one key person. There's not that one kind of personal brand out the front. Whereas for a lot, of course, creators, thought leaders, anyone that's leading a business like it is, if you think even on a big scale, think Virgin Group and Richard Branson. Richard Branson has way more followers than the Virgin Group and he has been able to start so many companies under the Virgin umbrella because he's Richard Branson. His personal brand supersedes the business brand. He can take that anywhere. And so this episode I'm going to talk to you about, personal brand has changed my business trajectory and how you can employ it as well in yours. The easiest possible way. All right, let's get to it. So when I started my personal brand, now when I say it is an evolution, I think one of the hardest things about becoming more visible is being comfortable enough to be yourself. And that happens with time. It also happens with age. So I am 41 now and when I started I was 20. So I did not have the confidence in myself that I have now. There was a whole lot of projecting of what I thought I should be. That now not only age but also time in public, also the time in front of the camera that's made me less self conscious, that's made me have a lower bucket of. I won't swear, but you get what I mean with that. Which is one of the best things about getting older is you have less of a bucket of Fs in there. So when I first started, I was running tutoring centers. Then I went into franchising when I was 27. And that's when I really started using my personal brand because I was getting a lot of awards, I was writing a lot of articles. So I was getting free publicity in newspapers, magazines, on tv. So I was really trying to build it that way so that I didn't have to pay for marketing. And when I started, I thought I needed to look like a leader. I thought I needed to look like a woman who was running a company. And in my mind, for some reason, that looked like taking myself to Portman's and buying a matching black suit. And really, I mean, I look at photos from that time like button up shirts and stuff. I don't know what I was thinking, but I do know what I was thinking. I was thinking that's what I had to be in order to be successful, because that was the mold, the best thing. Now, like entrepreneurship has really taken over, especially for females in the last 10 years. And I think we've got, got a lot more permission now to come as we are, to be who we are. And you get the permission to be able to change and evolve as well. And that is one of my favorite things, because we as humans do change and evolve. I know if you've been in business for a long time, you would probably know Naomi Simpson. So she started Red Balloon. She was massive in the female entrepreneur circles like a decade ago. She's still big now. She's still doing what she's doing, but she's nowhere near as she doesn't have to prove herself anymore. She's not speaking as much, all of that sort of thing. But I remember talking to her about personal brand, about, I don't know, 2012. So it was that 13 years ago we met at a Commbank Women in Focus conference and we were sitting next to each other and she always wore red. Everywhere she went, she wore a red dress. And she was telling me, tina, this is my brand. Like, this is what I do because it makes it recognizable. People see me, they recognize the red and it flows back into Red Balloon. And it was, it was fantastic. She was on tv, she always wore red. It was, it always linked back to her. She's like, you know what? Sometimes I feel like wearing blue. And it would have looked so strange if she had because she was so consistent with the red. And this is where I think, you know, she realized she could change at any time. And now I've seen her out many times in different colors, but for a good 10 years, I reckon Naomi only publicly wore red. And so I started out in those Portman's outfits. And then when I sold the franchise and then I started in this business, I was really, I was a lot more casual. So I was a lot more like, take me or leave me. I didn't have so much need to prove myself as I did in previous businesses because we were a lot more financially stable. But we were also, you know, I just had some more runs under my belt. So I'd kind of lost a little bit of that proof energy. But my next kind of phase in the early her empire builder days was, to put it mildly, like dopamine dressing. I had people say like you look like a rainbow has vomited all over everything you touch. And I was, I went through the stage, especially in Covid, when Covid hit, and everything just seemed a bit bleak. I think I overcompensated in what I was wearing. So I had like the wearable art shirts, dresses, big, massive, colorful earrings. You know, I was, I was really going for that whole rainbow aesthetic and loved it at the time. And then I just kind of went, you know what? I want to, I want to not dull it down, but I want to go for a little bit more of a subdued look. And that doesn't mean that I wanted to subdue myself. What that meant was, was I just wanted to. To wear some more classic pieces. I wanted to grow it up a bit. I wanted to be a bit more of a glow up version of Tina. And so started doing that. But the interesting thing was. So two years ago. Two years ago. Yeah, nearly two years ago now. I was. Or was it. No, it was just last year. It was just last year at my end of year planning day and I was running the conference and I had one of my members came up to me at the end and went, I just wanted to check that you're okay. And I was like, oh, thanks, yeah, yeah, I'm great. Did I not, like, did I not seem okay? Like, I just ran a whole nine hour day of planning. I was like, oh my gosh, was my energy off? Like, I thought I was bringing it. Like, I thought this was okay. And she's like, I've just really noticed lately that you're not so colorful and that you've really dulled yourself down. And I just wanted to make sure you're okay. And I looked down at myself and I was like, I know this was coming from a good place. I know her well. I know it's coming from a good place. But I was like, I'm literally wearing a bright blue jumpsuit. Like, there's not many humans I know that would wear like a cobalt blue, bright jumpsuit. I did have gold earrings on, not colorful earrings on, and it was one block color. But I'm like, I'm still, I'm still feeling bright and shiny. And so that was really interesting to me in going from a personal brand point of view. She had associated me with the color, with a lot of different color and movement, and it had actually put her off that I looked out of alignment with my brand. And as you know, you can take that. I could have taken that as a, as a insult, I guess, but what I took it as is an observation of personal brand in going all right, she saw that as not congruent with the brand that I was projecting. And so it does take some adjustment if you're wanting to change up your brand, and that's what I want you to be aware of. But I have changed up my brand so many times throughout my career, and I want you to know that it is very, very possible. So what I think, why I think personal brand matters now more than ever is obviously AI coming in. I mean, even just yesterday, I was playing with AI photo shoots and it has been blowing my mind how good it is. My husband can tell that it's not me, But I think 90% of people would be able to not tell that the photos are not actually me. And I think that's good in photos. I'm using Delphi for our members now. So everyone that does like is on in one of our courses or memberships has access to my Delphi AI, which is my clone. And so you can ask it anything. And it's actually smarter than me because it only has my knowledge. So I've put in all of the podcast episodes that I've ever recorded. I've put in all my podcast guest episode transcripts. I've put in every single masterclass I have ran, which has been like 600 masterclasses. I've put in every keynote speech I've done. Everything I've done, I've put in there. But why I say it's me, but smarter is if someone asks me, hey, Tina, you said this about this three years ago. I can't remember exactly what I said, but it has a perfect memory. It can recall anything and it can say, go here, download this lesson, and here's the template for you. And it's right there. It is magical. I haven't done the video version. Now, the reason I haven't done the video version, and I reserve the right to change my mind on this in the future. But I do think that it's a personal brand issue. I think that the more that AI comes into it, if people aren't seeing the real you at any of your touch points, then that disconnect will begin to form. And so while I think AI is incredible at being able to help supercharge what we're doing and save us a lot of time on the back end, I think front end wise, make sure you're connecting with humans from a human level. Because people follow personalities, perspectives, they follow movements, they don't follow AI. And so we want to have a combination so that you're able to leverage it, but also so that it is you at the forefront, remembering that you're running a brand to connect with people, remembering that your knowledge is all there, but people still want to connect with you. There's a lot of things, you know, say I will have. On the podcast, a few weeks ago we had Colin Boyd. Colin is an absolute legend now. I was asking him so many different questions about infusion selling, about selling through webinar, about how to do a really good talk, how to connect with people, how to do all of that. Now I can read his book, I can listen to his podcast, I can do everything. But when I see Colin in person, when I get to talk to him on Zoom even, it's such a more connective experience. And he wasn't necessarily saying anything different. But the different experience that I have from that is huge. And that is where I think AI won't actually replace the person is because it doesn't matter that you can get the information from someone's AI. We still want to be able to connect with the human. We still want to feel seen, we still want to see them, we're still interested in that human to human contact. So I think your personal brand is your biggest long term asset. It builds trust, it creates connection and it will attract your aligned buyers. So if I think of different people in the course creation industry, for example, or different business coaches, there are different. Like when I've hired coaches in the past, it's usually because of their personal brand. So I assume anybody who's doing business coaching knows their stuff. So if we take that off the table and just go, everyone is great at what they do. So then what sets people apart is their brand. I will gravitate towards somebody because I feel like values are aligned, you know, I will feel like, you know, political views, worldviews, views about how we want to run our businesses. Like I'm very clear in that, you know, it's not this or that you can have this and that you can build a great business, you can have a great home life. That's not necessarily going to appeal to the person who loves Alex Hormozi that wants to work 15 hours a day and hustle and grind. It's also not going to appeal to the person who wants to live a laptop life and follows the lazy millionaire and wants to be able to shortcut and hack everything and just like work two hours a week and just sit there and count your dollar bills, you know, so it's A lot of. I know that doesn't sound so bad, does it? But it's not the type of business that I want to run or that I think is real or sustainable. But your personal brand is what's going to attract you. So the more you're vocal about how you run your business, how you live your life, the more you will either attract or repel people. And that's what you want because you'll end up with people that have very similar value. It means that you can get good work, you can enjoy your work because you're doing work with people who you're aligned with. You also take it with you. So one of the things that after I sold Begin Bright, my company in 2016, I had like, not a midlife crisis, but I had a really, like a gaping few months where I was going, what now? Like, who am I without this business and anything else that I do, I'm going to have to start from scratch. I'm going to have to start all over again. And what I learned was you never start from scratch when you've built a personal brand. So when I started Her Empire Builder was not my first online. Before that I had scale up, then I had laptop life. But when I started those things, I had a massive head start because I wasn't starting from scratch. I had already built my business profile previously. I'd already been coaching people on the side of running my business for about 10 years. So I already had a reputation. I already had that personal brand built. So it meant that I could springboard it into whatever I wanted to next. And if the day comes where I'm not running her Empire Builder anymore, I will never worry what am I going to do next? Because I know that whatever idea I get or whatever new thing I want to go into, I take me with me. I take that reputation I've built, I take that connectivity, I take that trust I've built. I take that whole thing that I've built in previous industries and I take that with me to the next thing. So it is very well worth building your personal brand for the longevity of our careers and our lives, because your name is the shortcut to trust. And everything then becomes easier. We had Amy Porterfield in a couple months ago to run a guest expert session inside Her Empire Builder, which was awesome. I won't digress from the topic, but I was a mad fan girl. I'm unashamed. I was just like, oh my God, it's Amy Porterfield and she's here with us. She's awesome. But one of the things that she said was she's earned her elevation. And I thought that was so incredibly poignant when it comes to personal brand and what she meant by that, like, she did elaborate on it to say that it's nowhere near as difficult for her now to market, to do well because she has earned the elevation that her personal brand has built. People in the course industry, they know who Amy Porterfield is. You know, there's. She has earned that reputation. She doesn't need to work so hard now. And that is what personal brand does, is you don't need to work as hard someone without personal brand because it's so leveraged and you're able to build off that. Okay, so what I want to leave you with in that section is people don't binge your brand, they binge you. So make sure what you're saying is clear. Make sure you know what you're standing for. So a little bit of the difference between business and brand. A business sells the products, A brand builds the beliefs. So using your personal brand as the engine behind the business will allow you to sell all your products way easier. It doesn't really matter what the product is if you've got the great personal brand there. And if you think about that in a more challenging sort of way, think about, you buy some products and you have no idea who the owner is, but there's some that you buy because of the person behind it. I know that like some art I've bought, I've bought because I liked the person painting it and I wanted to have a piece of their artwork in my home. Same with some, like, jewelry I love. There's Alex Tempany who makes this handmade gold jewelry, and I love it. And so I would rather buy from her and support her than buy from like a big name and go into like Michael Hill Jeweler or some big chain brand and buy their jewelry. And so a lot of the time your personal brand is going to come into play when people are making those buying decisions. A business is very transactional, whereas your brand is transformational. You are going human to human, and that matters. People will develop that care and you can have that, like copacetic care going back and forth. So what I want you to ask yourself is, what are you known for and does your content reflect that? So when you think like, what is someone saying about you when you're not around, that is very, very helpful to know so that you can work out, is it what you want? And it's something that I Have a great group of girlfriends that are all in business. And every year we ask the question of each other. If you had to describe me to somebody else, I know this is super nerdy, but it's super helpful. If you had to describe me to someone else and what I do, what would you say? And then we make sure that, okay, we're another year older now. Does this track. Does this, like, meet who we want to be now? Because we're forever evolving. We're forever changing. We're forever growing up. Especially, like, for our age group now. A lot of my friends are perimenopausal, menopausal, and, you know, children growing up and moving out. And it's this whole shift of life where, you know, the person we were five years ago is different to the person we are now. And so we have to keep that all very nice and neat and make sure that what we're projecting is what we want to be able to project. So the three pillars of a scalable brand is your message. So making sure, like I said, what you're known for and making sure that that's being projected. What is your big idea? What hill are you, like, willing to die on? Like, what is the thing that you are known for? And for me, like, when I ask my members that in our feedback surveys, they'll say it's like having a big life. This or that. It's this and that. They'll say, doing all the things, it's repeated to me a lot. So you want to get that message in so that. That, you know, the messaging that people are saying to others about you is what you're being reflected back. One of the things I ask on our feedback form is if you were to describe her empire builder to a friend, how would you describe it? And so I'm looking for that language. If you were to describe me to a friend and recommend me to a friend, what would you say? I'm best at asking those questions of people that you trust and that know you. That will give you huge amounts of insight. The other, the second pillar of the scalable personal brand is media. Now, this is something that I know some people love, I know some people find harder. So you want to, when it comes to media, create with consistency. And I'm talking about all the different media. So I'm talking about podcasts, I'm talking about videos, I'm talking about writing your newsletter, being in articles on tv, writing your book, social media, like, all of the marketing that we do to elevate our personal brands. It's not necessary to be everywhere. That is what I think a lot of people get wrong. When you get bigger, you can be everywhere. I am in most things now, but I've taken my foot off the pedal when it comes to third party media. So when I'm in growth phase, if I have a year and I'm like, you know what, this year I'm pedal to the metal. I'm hitting it. I want 20% growth. Let's go, Tina. All the way. The first thing I do is I hit the media. So I will get on 50 other people's podcasts. I will write articles for online publications. I'll get myself in some newspapers like Money magazine, Financial Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur. I will go and hit them. I will promote whatever I can promote. I get myself visible and out there. When I'm in more of a. Not a knocker with you, but more of a like, let's just continue on. Like, I don't want the business to fall, but I'm not really. I don't have my hustle on this year, then that's what I drop off. I always keep consistent with the podcast because that's my biggest like, connective thing. We have about a thousand people a week that listen to the podcast. Hello, friend. Thank you for listening. And so I keep this going because I know people enjoy it and I know people get a lot out of it. And so I'm like, this is my connective trust thing that I will keep building. I always keep going with social media because it's the easiest to be able to do. We've got a really good rinse and repeat system that we use for it, which makes it a whole lot easier. Even with AI generated ideas that I can then do myself. Very, very easy to keep consistent with. And my weekly newsletter. So those three things are like the consistent things that I will always do. And then I'll add on the others depending on how much we're trying to supercharge at that time. The third is momentum. So the third is not to come out in fits and bursts where you're like there and then you disappear. You have. If you want your personal brand to build and you want that trust to build, then you need to stay visible in the market. So this is where like using systems to make it a whole lot easier because I'll talk to people about this inside her empire builder and we give all of the systems to be able to be in the media, both third party, social media, podcasting, everything. We show you exactly how to do that. But what a lot of people, you know, the reaction when a lot of people see this is overwhelm. It's to go, whoa, that's a lot. And when you're starting from zero, of course it seems like a lot, but it does get easier as you go. And once you have a system for how to create that and how to repurpose content through the years, it becomes far, far easier to do consistently. But if you think of your favorite creators, think of your favorite business owners, I bet you they're consistent. I bet they don't, like, sell and then disappear. I bet you are able to see them on the regular. If not, you kind of forget about them. So you want to have that momentum. Now, where most people get stuck when it comes to this is the fear of being too much or the fear of being not enough. Now, at the moment, I've got some private coaching clients and two of them. This is what's stopping them from, like, elevating to that next level is that fear of being too much. So I'll hear things like, I don't want people to think I'm too big for my boots. I don't want my cousin to look at me and think, oh, my God, she thinks she's all that. Like, how embarrassing. What's she doing on the Internet? Who does she think she is? Right? So that is something that I see time and time again. That people don't put themselves out there because they're afraid of being seen as too much or they're feeling lack of confidence, so they're feeling like they're not good enough to share their ideas, to put themselves out there. Both of them are probably wildly untrue. Now, I'm not going to say people won't judge you. I am sure, sure that there are people out there looking at my social media, judging the bedraisers out of me. But I don't really care one because they don't tell me. So what I don't know doesn't hurt me. And with the amount of volume that I do, I probably get maybe two negative comments a year, like not much. And so it's nowhere near as bad as what we make it in our heads. And there is a small circle of people who I care about. I care about my husband's opinions. I care about my best friend's opinion. They will tell me if they think what I've done is a little too far or a little off. I care about my kids. That's about it. You know, I care about my clients, like the people that are paying me money to serve them, I want to be relevant to them. So I take that feedback very seriously. But everybody else, like there's people, you know, take the most extreme example that I can think of, which is Meghan Markle, Megan Sussex, you know who I'm talking about. I cannot believe the bullying that that woman sustains. Like her or loathe her. Imagine going about your life, going about your day, having that many publications and that many individuals, strangers on the Internet criticising you and being so incredibly mean. Cause it's not just normal criticism, it's so incredibly mean. And I think that the bravery and the strength that that woman must have to just get out with her kids to go to lunch with a friend, like all of that sort of thing, I think that's commendable because that would be hard. But that is the most extreme example and she still survives. And so I think in terms of personal brand, most of us will Never encounter even 0.00001% of what is happening when you're a big name like that. And so don't let that set you off. And you know, a friend of mine said to me years ago when I was like, you know, do you ever, do you ever get sick of, of the judgment? Because she was very polarizing. So I think I'm not vanilla, but I also am not super polarising. I don't share very like very out there things. Whereas she was very controversial and very outspoken with politics and world of. So that's always going to get you a whole lot more judgment. And her response to me was, I will dry my tears with my dollar bills. That is what she said. And so I think if you're holding yourself back from building your personal brand because you're worried about what Uncle Harry is going to say to you, then it will stop you from building the life that you want. It will stop you from building the business that you know you can. And so don't let that stop you because Harry's probably just miserable on his own. And a lot of people that are, judging from the sidelines, I think they're just looking at people that are in the arena wishing that they had the gumption to be in there doing it too. Because a lot of people don't have that bravery. They don't have that audacity to be able to share their thoughts and be vulnerable enough to open themselves up for that. But with the risk, risk comes such incredibly great reward and that is always worth it. So we want to keep like Try and keep that fear at bay. And the more you do it, the more that fear goes away. Like I said at the beginning, your bucket of Fs gets a lot less. What else gets most people stuck is hiding behind their brand instead of owning the spotlight. So making sure that when you're stepping out onto the stage that you're owning it, that you're not shrinking yourself, lack of consistency or intentionality, and creating content from pressure instead of purpose. So what I mean by that is, if you feel like no matter what I have to do one post a day, if you're not inspired to do that, if it's not coming from a good place and there's no purpose with it, you're actually better to do less, but to do it better. So always do it your way and always do it with purpose. You don't need to be everywhere but the places that you are. You want to be authentically you. And I know that's so cliched and so overused, like, just be you. You do. You show up as your true, authentic self. But seriously, that's what you need to do. The more that you can drop into who you really are, the more that will resonate with people and the more people will connect with you or know that they're not your flavor. And then you don't end up with people in your programs that you're like, like, oh, my God, how did I get this person? I always think, like, when I have private clients, when I have masterminds, when I have the things with high touch points, I love working with those people. And the reason I love working with those people is because we have similar value systems. I'm not constantly arguing with them or trying to change their minds on cellular things, which is very, very helpful. Okay, so branding at scale, how we go from personality to platform. You want to build teams and systems to make this easier. I think Once you're over $100,000 a year, everyone should have a VA to start doing all of your social media, to start doing anything that's systemizable and anything that you can automate now, you need to be automating because you can automate so much more than what we used to be able to do. You want to be able to amplify your authority. And how you do that is with the collaborations with media features, everything that I've talked about so far, and then owning it with confidence, like having conviction in your views. So much of marketing and selling is conviction. Like when you hear someone and they know unequivocally that their product is awesome and that the transformation promise is so solid. If you do the work, you're going to get there. Like, it's so compelling. Compared to someone that's like, I think this is okay. Like, I've kind of done it. It's not my best work, but I think it'll be all right. Like, you need to have that convict really own your part as industry leader. There's no point in coming into the game and going, you know what? I'm just going to go along for the ride. It won't get you the goals that you're going for. You have to be able to aim to be that industry leader. Look at your industry and go, how can. How can I be at the forefront? How can. When there is an industry conference, they want me on their stage? How can. When there's, you know, any call out for things, they're thinking me. Like Amy Porterfield said, with her elevated, she's earned her elevation. Like, you think courses, you think Amy Porterfield. And so you want to be able to be synonymous with the industry that you are in. So you already have a personal brand. Whether you like it or not, you have one. Everybody has a personal brand. Everybody has things that they're going for. The question is, is it working for you? Is it what you want it to be? Do you need to change it at all? So ask, like, what do you stand for? And would that everybody say the same thing? And if not, really get clear on that and then start dialing it up, start amplifying it, because your voice deserves to be heard. And I want to see it out there in the world. Happy brand building.