Building & Expanding Your Brand: During COVID19 and Beyond, with Jessica Korthuis

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Rachel Shepherd. I'm the Director of Global Marketing at the Founder Institute and the co-creator of the Female Founder Initiative. The Female Founder Initiative is a platform powered by Founder Institute, the world's largest pre-seed accelerator, to help women founders around the world launch, grow, and fund their startup companies. And we support women through our Slack channel, partner resources, and office hours. If you're interested in learning more about that, you can visit www.femalefounderinitiative.com. And if you're interested in learning more about the Founder Institute, we're currently enrolling across 6 continents and many, many countries and cities. And you can see if there's a program near you at fi.co/enrolling. We have a lot of virtual program offerings right now as well. Uh, and here I am joined today by Jessica Courthouse, founder and CEO of SoHouse, an education platform and membership community that provides marketing and branding education programs to help early-stage female founders grow and market their businesses. Um, Jessica is a powerhouse brand strategist, and so we're super honored to have her here today. In her tenure, she has worked with incredible brands like Red Bull, TEDxWomen, Girls Who Code, Stanford University, Bloomingdale's, and the Florida Institute of Technology. She's also a two-time organizer of Techstars Startup Weekend, a mentor for Social Enterprise Alliance, brand advisor to Rebuild Globally, 40 Under 40 honoree, a Woman Who Means Business honoree, and was recently listed as Women to Watch in 2019 by a nationally accredited publication called BizWomen. So we are super honored that Jessica's here today. Welcome, Jessica. I don't know if there's anything you want to add.

That was quite an introduction. Thank you for having me, Rachel. Yeah, I'm just so happy to be here. I love that we've got so many attendees today from all over the world. You know, I adore the Founder Institute and what you guys stand for and what you're doing. So I'm really grateful to be here.

Wonderful. And we have a fully global audience with us today. And I see everyone's saying where they're tuning in from. I'm tuning in from the Bay Area, from California, and Jessica is joining us as well. Georgia, right? Awesome. And we also have people from Israel, Dubai, Switzerland, Lagos, Hamburg, Vancouver. Welcome, welcome, welcome everyone. We're so excited to have you here today. All right, so Jessica has generously provided her time to answer your most pressing branding questions. So she's gonna go over some of the best practices that she teaches and works with founders on every day. And share with you for about 25 to 30 minutes, like the best of the best information she's brought for us today to help you improve your brand strategy for your startup, especially during this time, right, which is an unprecedented time that we're all in right now. And then we're going to reconvene for some questions. So be sure to pay, you know, as you're looking at the presentation, make note of your questions and then we'll bring Jessica back on and myself back on and we'll go through some Q&A as well. So without further ado, I'll hand it over to Jessica.

Awesome. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for having me. So what I'm going to do, as Rachel said, we have a lot to cover. I'm going to share my screen. And, you know, when Rachel and I were talking about how to put together this session, I was like, okay, how can I really like give actionable information and data that's going to be super relevant for this community? Within a relatively short period of time. So to do that, I'm actually going to turn off my video for this section of the session so that I can make sure that you guys can see the full presentation on the screen. But don't worry, on the end I'll come back on video and then as Rachel said, we'll be doing a live Q&A and then I can answer all your questions and anything else that you have about the presentation. Sound good? Thumbs up, Rachel? Okay, cool. All right, so let me go ahead and turn off my video. You all should still be able to see me and then let me share my screen. One second.

Right.

Okay. Move all this out of the way. All right, can Rachel, can you give me a nod, a head nod if you can see my screen?

We absolutely can. You're all set.

Perfect. Okay, great. Wonderful. All right, well, again, thank you so much for having me. This session, we're gonna be talking about building and expanding your brand during COVID-19 and beyond. And, you know, as Rachel said before, my name is Jessica Courthouse. I'm the founder and CEO of my company, Sew House, which I'm happy to share a little bit more with you today. And, you know, as we get started, the first thing I always love to do with my sessions is just really encourage you to turn off your cell phone, right? Turn off Facebook, turn off any other distractions that you may have during the session. Just really take this next 60 minutes, 45 to 60 minutes, to just really work on your business instead of in your business. As founders and small business owners, and even those who are running large teams, oftentimes one of the biggest mistakes that we make is that we are so— we're always in our business all the time. And so First thing I want to challenge you to do today, no matter where you're tuning in from, is to just shut off all your notifications, take some notes, really soak it, really soak it in, and take this time for yourself so that you can take this time to grow your business. All right. So just again, just another really quick, brief introduction. So Rachel did a fabulous intro. There's really not much more I can say about that. But, you know, this is a picture of me. I am a lover and advocate for womenpreneurs. My last name is Dutch, actually. My husband's from Amsterdam. So if we have anyone tuning in from Holland today, nice to have any other, any other of the Dutch community here in the webinar. So my company, as Rachel said, is called SoHouse. I founded it in 2016 and it's morphed a lot since then. But now we've landed really in our secret sauce and we are an educational platform and digital membership community that teaches early-stage female founders how to brand and market their businesses. And Ultimately, I founded this company as a way to productize my own knowledge and provide practical, easy-to-understand and implement marketing education and frameworks in a way that would remove the unique barriers that women face when marketing their businesses. I know that the webinar today is not exclusively geared towards women. So even if you are on team male and you're joining our webinar today, you can absolutely benefit from all the knowledge here that I'm sharing. And my company over time has since then organically grown outside of my unique knowledge to include a growing group of community mentors and other industry experts like Rachel, who's gonna be teaching a session for us. And they have domain expertise in certain marketing verticals. We focus on curating courses, workshops, guides, tools, and a variety of other resources to empower our early-stage or solo founders to build their brands on really solid ground. That's just a little bit of background about my company. I've worked with some global, global brands all over the world through my years co-founding and being the agency director of my former agency. I've included some of the projects I've worked on below just to kind of give you a wide, you know, breadth of understanding of the work that I've done. I've also worked with the European Union and the U.S. Department of State through my role at one of the nonprofits I worked at where we built entrepreneurial ecosystems all over the world. So I've had a unique perspective of entrepreneurship as it pertains to a global marketplace. And it's interesting, even though every market has different marketing practices, the core of what we're going to be going over today is really the same across borders, which is really awesome and really interesting. Let's see, I consider myself a global citizen and I raise my daughter to be that way as well. And I've had a very unique and, uh, interesting journey through entrepreneurship. I'm happy to share that with you later. And as I said before, I'm just happy to be here and been given the opportunity to teach this session for this community. So thank you for having me. All right, so let's go ahead and dive right in. So the first thing I want to talk about today is the big shift. And I'm kind of putting together the content for this course. Sourced all this data from a bunch of different places. This particular quote is from MIT Sloan of Management in Cambridge. Of course, it's good to note that some of the research here was conducted by US-based companies, and obviously I'm well aware we have a global audience here. However, in sourcing the data for this session, I found that a ton of the information that was echoed in this study were also echoed in other global resources I was able to find. And so, you know, towards the end of the presentation, we are going to go over specific global trends, But I just wanted to let you know that this particular data is here from US-based, but it is definitely still relevant to organizations and founders who are all over the globe. So this is what they said here, and there's really no better way to say it than this quote. This is the big shift that's happened. COVID-19 has already had an enormous impact on consumers and brands, right? We all know that. The stay-at-home directives, radical shifts in demand for certain product categories, undersupplied distribution channels and supply chain difficulties for certain companies have disrupted habitual behaviors and required customers to shop in new ways. Right, so what does this mean? Let's kind of break this down and what this might mean for you. So in terms of market highlights, right, humans are cognitive misers. And what that means is that we use mental shortcuts to guide our, our judgments and decisions. And that's the use case for marketing, that's the use case for how we just function as human beings in general. So what does this mean for marketing and branding and specifically in terms of purchasing behavior? So in normal times, gaining customers' attention and moving the needle on key consumer behavior metrics, right, whatever those things are, is a really costly endeavor and it's often beyond the budgets and marketing capabilities of many small and mid-tier brands. The reason for that is because it's costly, it requires trial and error, it requires time and space and resources to test your customer's buying behavior within those different scenarios. Right, but now there's been a huge effect on purchasing behavior because of this big shift that we're seeing. And what being a cognitive miser tells us is that once a buying routine or preference for a particular brand is established, it becomes habitual and it's very difficult to change. So this is especially challenging for small business owners because small businesses, startups, founding teams, right, we've typically— those businesses are built on a relatively unsteady foundation to begin with, right, which is why groups like Founder Institute and other communities and why my company exists is to be able to provide that foundation in a really meaningful way. But figuring out how to reach new customers or how to identify new purchasing behaviors and what that means for your brand is a very risky move because oftentimes you don't want to rock the boat, essentially, right? You don't want to push your brand over to one direction or another when it's already built on a, on a, you know, uneasy foundation, right? So the good news about this radical big shift is this, is that our current environment, because of COVID it's offered an unprecedented opportunity for smaller companies to compete against more established brands, either for exposure or for market share and/or for a broader base of potential customers. And this is because those normal purchasing patterns have been disrupted and there have been fundamental shifts that we've seen across verticals and across countries in consumer mindset across the globe, right? Certainly each business, business vertical is going to different, but in general, this is what we've seen as a direct result of COVID We've seen 5 really unique shifts in consumer behavior and mindset, and I think this is really important for this community as you think about how your brand shows up during this time, represents itself, serves its customers, and thinks about how it's going to pivot after COVID, right? We're all really focused on how do we survive COVID and what do we do now, which is great, but then the other half of the coin is also figuring out how do you maintain, right? How do you grow from COVID and what are some unique things that you can do now that will position your brand to be really successful post-COVID? So the first big shift we've seen is an increased readiness to try direct-to-consumer offerings, right? Or to shop online at stores that offer home delivery. This is really self-explanatory, just simply just because of the logistics of not going out. So what we're seeing here is that there is no more middleman, right? It just doesn't make sense right now to go out. I mean, if you can, people do, right? Obviously this is determinant on socioeconomic status and other factors, but in general, there's definitely an increased readiness to figure out how to get your brand directly to the customer without that third-party distribution channel. So if you are a business right now that requires that third-party distribution channel, like a vendor or like a retail store or something like that, perhaps you can consider ways that you can move to a more direct-to-customer format if you're not already doing that. So that's one of the big shifts that we have seen is this increased readiness to try and engage in direct-to-consumer offerings, or of course, shop on stores for home delivery. The second big shift we've seen is a focus on function. And This is really important. A focus on function, meaning that purchase behavior is being driven by category availability and the type of benefit more than brand preference. Right? So like people, you know, go back to that cognitive miser scenario. Consumers have been comfortable with the brands that they buy from, but because of what's happened, it's now disrupting that. And so now this concept of focusing on pure function, right, this allows us the opportunity to be able to break those habits and rethink about how your business can provide a unique benefit even for that customer who has a brand preference for someone else. And it's simply because they just might not know about you, it's simply because your brand might be smaller, or whatever those reasons are, right? But it's really understanding to focus on function. And we'll dive a little bit more into this at the end, but The brands who make it and who will continue to thrive post-COVID are those that take an authentic and public interest in social issues, whether it's race, as we're seeing here in the US, ethical manufacturing, sustainability, right? Things like this. I kind of got ahead of myself there, sorry about that, guys. So yeah, we'll go to focus on function here a little bit at the end. And then the third shift I want to share with you is this growth of interest in brands that combine that functional performance with pro-social behavior. So as I was saying before, the brands who really make it are going to continue to thrive post-COVID are those that do take that authentic public interest in pro-social issues, right? So as I said before, whether it's race, as we're seeing here in the US right now, perhaps ethical manufacturing, sustainability, things like this. Not to mention the fact that there's been almost 2.7 billion workers globally, which is 4 in 5 of the world's workforce has been displaced or out of work, right? So all of these things play a role into these major shifts in mindsets. And the fourth shift is this loss of interest in status-driven purchases. And I'm sure you could understand this, whether it's from your own perspective or people that you know in your communities. Because of this global displacement and the global unemployment is almost up to 190 million people. That's an absolutely staggering number to conceptualize. And for this reason, purchases related to status or luxury goods, we've seen a significant decrease. So if you are a brand tuning in and you cater to a specific type of that, that specific type of elite customer, you'll need to think about ways that you can contribute to your customers' purchasing behavior and contribute to their psyche, and/or rethink your go-to-market strategy. That's not to say that there's no place for luxury brands. Absolutely, there are a lot of people who are still buying luxury goods, right? But if you can figure out how to make your brand relevant to these shifts in this global marketplace, you will be able to tap into those new customers that we talked about earlier, tap into customers that you potentially didn't have the access to than ever before. And then the last thing that we've seen is there's been a big spike in interest in how companies behind brands are treating their employees. This goes back to sort of a deeper conversation around brand values. So what does your brand actually care about? What's your brand's vision, mission, purpose? This has always been very, very important before COVID but it's going to be critical in navigating a post-COVID world. Marketplace. So I know that's kind of like a lot to take in, and we could probably literally teach a class on every single one of these points. But in general, the highlights are this, right? Increase readiness to try direct-to-consumer offerings. So I'd encourage you right now to think about, is your brand doing that? And if not, how can you do it? And if you are doing it, how can, how can you do it better? And how can you potentially accelerate that or scale that? The second thing, the second shift is to focus on function, right? It's really about purchase behavior is being driven by the availability of products and services within that category and the type of benefit versus brand preference, right? So this tells us that you can be a smaller brand and still be able to play with the big boys, basically, if you understand how your, how your product or solution really drives value to a particular customer segment. Growth of interest in brands that combine functional performance with that pro-social behavior, right? Where do you stand on these issues is really important. And some of the members in our community and the founders that I've talked to over the years and years, there's always sort of this misconception that you need to be out here saving the world to be important. And yes, there are amazing brands and tons of ways to do this. But if you're— if that's not your business or that's not the founders that you're working with, there's a lot of different ways that you can take a stance on pro-social behavior within your unique vertical, right? And there's no way we could kind of go into all that today. Maybe we could take a few questions on it, but essentially it just goes back to what do you care about? You know, if you are manufacturing a product, are there certain stages in the manufacturing process that you are talking about? What is the broader dialogue of your brand and how does this relate to prosocial behavior? So figuring out those connections with your companies are going to be really important. Again, to highlight loss of interest in those status-driven purchases. So again, it's about value. And then the fifth big shift in review is an interest in how companies behind those brands are treating their employees. So where can we all go from here? Knowing that there's been this great big shift, knowing that there's going to be opportunities for your brand to be successful now and post-COVID, what I wanted to do is sort of then pivot the conversation to 6 true components to all successful brand strategies. And, you know, it does not matter what type of business you have. It doesn't matter if you're B2B, if you're B2C, if you are in some vertical or another vertical, right, these are very critical components to all successful brand strategies, no matter where you are around the globe. And again, these were important pre-COVID, but now they're really going to be important during COVID and after. So the first one I want to share with you and teach you today is think solution, not just product. And this has always been the case, but as I said, it's even more important now. Founders must understand that there really is no such thing as an ideal product. And I know that sounds very counterintuitive, right? The only, only a solution that fits your customer's needs and desired outcomes is really where your brands can kind of work its magic, right? So let me say that again. There really is no ideal product, right? There's, there's going to be brands out there who have more resources, who can beat you all day long and who can basically out-product you, right, or out-service you. So thinking about that is kind of a— it gets you kind of caught up into a tricky rat race. It's really about understanding your customer's needs and their desired outcomes and then manufacturing a solution, a product or solution or service that meets or matches and exceeds those needs and desired outcomes. Many leading brands that continue to define their appeal their core value based on how they're different. Like, let me rephrase this. Many leading brands, they continue to define their appeal and their core value based on how they are differentiated from their competitors, right? And I know this sounds semantics, but it's really a very key shift in thinking about how you go to market and how you position your brand, right? We want to know what competitors are doing. That's always important. We want to know what's working for them, what's not working, what the market is responding to them and how they're responding. However, the opportunity lies in not what your competitors are doing and how you can do it differently. The opportunity lies in how you can differentiate yourself for your customers, right? So again, it's not really about being competitive with other products on the market. It's about focusing on a unique solution for your unique customer base. So I hope that, I hope that makes sense. It's really all about providing that value to your customers. All right, and then second is I want you to think access and not just place. And this is what I mean by this. While getting products to market will always remain a core marketing function, right, that will never go away. However, having a broader, more long-term accessibility plan requires that founders consider an omnichannel perspective that includes the best and most effective outlets and points of distribution where consumers can be exposed to your brand, right? So it's not just where they can buy your particular product or solution, it's where do they buy it and how do they access it. So the brands that get ahead are those that can, that can increase the accessibility of their solutions and Again, we could literally teach an entire class on every single one of these points, right? But in general, the best way to get started here is to think about how do your current, like, what are your current customer acquisition channels? How do your customers currently find your brand? What are they, how are they finding you and what is encouraging them to buy or not buy? And if you can figure that out, if you can figure out how truly accessible is your brand, then you can work on maximizing that accessibility, right? Basically we want to make it easier for customers to find you. And there is a kind of a quick and dirty thing I like to teach, and this is something called the Google test. This is something that one of our Spanish community mentors and I were talking about just the other day. This is just a really quick, easy way to test one form of accessibility of your brand. So the Google test is basically this. It's how would someone search for your solution if they typed it into Google? So for example, my company SoHouse, we create branding and marketing educational material for female founders. If I were to look up search queries, which I can do with Keyword Searcher or Keyword Surfer and Ubersuggest and some other tools, I can see that the search queries related to branding and marketing membership or branding and marketing community are very low. Right? However, search terms like how to get more customers, how to grow my social media, marketing plan, marketing plan template, right? All of these search terms are very high in search queries. So basically it's really about— it's reverse engineering your customer's perspective. What are they typing into Google? What are the key terms that they are typing in that's going to eventually lead them to your product or your solution. It's ultimately not your product or solution they're looking for, right? What they're looking for is how to solve their problems. So that's kind of a different way to kind of think about accessibility is, you know, how is your product spoken about? How does it speak to your customers? Are you using terms and language that your customers can identify with immediately? That will lead them down a path to buy, and then at minimum, to be interested in what it is that you're trying to say. So hopefully that was a little bit helpful, kind of thinking about like the Google test and just quickly kind of reverse engineering how your customers might search for your unique solution. The other pillar that I would encourage you to think about is think education, not just promotion. This one is probably self-explanatory. But this is a very easy one that a lot of founders oftentimes get caught up on. And so there's a rule that I want to teach you today. It's called the 80/20 rule. And basically what this means is that as long as your brand is following the 80/20 rule, you'll be in a good place in terms of that balance between producing valuable content and self-promotion. And what the 80/20 rule says is that 80% of your content needs to bring value, right? With a capital V. And so how do you bring value? I mean, that's, that's very unique to your business, right? But education is one of the ways, one of the global ways that you can think about value. So while 80% of your content needs to produce value, 20% of your content can be self-serving, right? I.e. sales related or this promotion that you're doing, or maybe you're doing a, you know, a partnership with someone and you have a limited access or a limited offer. Stuff like that. So what you do with that 80% of when you're not sharing your business, right? It's about educating. It's about advocating, teaching, bringing awareness, offering behind the scenes content, right? Think about the broader dialogue that your business is having with your community. And definitely pre-COVID, this is important. During COVID this is important. We've seen a 40% increase in online education right now. So, and then continuing to provide content that that brings value is key with any type of business within any vertical. So again, if you can kind of quickly think about the 80/20 rule, that'll give you a good framework to kind of get started about how you can balance educational, meaningful content, non-sales-related content. And then, you know, that 20% content, I'm sure you're already owning with, you know, self-serving content. And all of that is great, right? Like, as founders, and especially for the community I work with, the female founders, female founders have a relatively large fear of self-advocating. So that 20% sometimes can be a struggle for a lot of female founders. So there's a way that you can do this in a meaningful way. But again, if you're just kind of cutting it pretty dry, the 80/20 rule is a good rule of thumb to kind of keep you moving forward on this educational piece. So the number 4, the 4th kind of component and pillar would be community. Community is beneficial for business for an infinite amount of reasons. And again, I feel like this term is kind of like, I feel like it's overused right now, but it's really just so critically important, right? When it comes to COVID, community has been critical. And when you break down truly what community is, is it's just an easy way to quickly communicate relevant accurate information across, across a wide variety of audiences. Building a community builds brand stewardship, loyalty, trust, transparencies. And, you know, again, speaking from like our audience and the audience that we serve, one of the highest reported struggles for female founders is that they feel that they're constantly working in a vacuum. And I know this is true for male founders as well that I've mentored and work with. Entrepreneurship is a very isolating experience. So community is crucial for us as we serve our founders. So that's the other thing I'd like to continue to encourage you to think about is how are you either A, building community, and if your business is not a community-focused organization, that's okay. And if you're not building community, then how are you serving community, right? How are you empowering your particular customers, which basically are your community? How are you empowering them, elevating them, advocating for them? With your brand. This is very important and will continue to be important post, a post-COVID marketplace. And then number 5 is another one that's very overused but very important. These key terms that we've heard over and over again, transparency, authenticity, and values. I have an entire class dedicated to this. I wish we could go deeper, but this alone, like if you, if you ignore everything else, this alone is the key, right? So this is the building block for everything else. Without transparency, without authenticity, without values, a brand does not have a strong foundation. And simply knowing what your brand stands for isn't enough anymore. So just knowing that your brand might stand for XYZ, that's, that's a great start, but it's not enough in terms of differentiating your business and providing true value to your customers. It's about knowing your values and living and breathing those values and manifesting those values in all aspects of your business and how you grow your team and how you talk to your customers and how you serve customers, your packaging, your customer service. I mean, those values trickle down into every aspect of your business. So just knowing them is just, is just half the battle. Then it's actually living those values, breathing those values, and empowering others with those values are going to be really important. And I know I wanted to show you this quick graphic because I'm kind of putting together the data for this session. I thought this was really interesting. So how— I wanted to know, how do consumers actually define transparency, right? These are broad terms globally that are pretty subjective. And again, this is something from a US-based piece of data that I found, but it was echoed in other pieces of data I found as well. So looking at the large circle at 59%, consumers define transparency as a brand just simply being open, right? It's not that groundbreaking when you think about it. 53% is clarity, 49% honesty, right? 26% authenticity, integrity, and communication. Transparency and authenticity, of course, can go hand in hand. They can be interchangeable terms at times, right? No matter the combination of the words that we associate with, what's important here is that at the end of the day, your customers don't expect you to be perfect. That was the case before COVID and it's definitely the case during, and it will continue to be the case after. Your customers don't expect you to have all the answers, but they do expect you to be truthful. They expect you to be authentic about what you believe in, what you care about, what you stand for. And they expect you to be open and clear about those values. And, you know, when you really— marketing is so cumbersome and so complicated, which is one of the things that we are addressing with my company and our community for our founders. And when you just, when you strip away the shiny ball syndrome, when you strip away all the fancy, you know, marketing jargon, at the end of the day, these are basic qualities that we would want from our friends, right? These are basic qualities that we would want from those that we trust and care about. And the big shift, and I would say this has been happening well before COVID I mean, at least in the 10 years that I've been involved in this space, consumers expect these values from you, the brand, the same way that they would expect those values from their friends, loved ones, people that they care about. So certainly, you know, there's marketing, you know, growing a marketing, brand, like growing a brand and marketing your company, follow— there are certain steps you have to follow, right? But if you don't have this core critical piece figured out, the rest of your marketing steps are going to be built on a rocky foundation. And so I really thought this is really important to kind of share with you, kind of stripping away all of the shininess about marketing. The— this is really kind of the meat of the matter, is this. Ability to be open, transparent, and clear about what your brand is and what you stand for. All right, and then so the last one is one that I love to talk about, love to teach. And this is a saying, I'm sure you've heard the saying, a friend to all is a friend to none. Um, we have a marketing saying that's very similar, and that is, if you market to all, you market to none. So if you're kind of sitting here in this session, you're like, okay, yes, I got it. You know, I can educate my people. I understand my customers. I can be clear and transparent about my values, but I don't know who exactly to market to. And how do I actually hone in on my target audience, my ideal customer? This saying I love to teach because in marketing and branding, and like, I've even seen this at global organizations that I've worked with in big Brands, you cannot effectively market to everyone equally at the same time, right? Of all the brands, projects, and founders I've had the, I've had the opportunity to work with over the past years, I would say this is the biggest mistake that I see that's being made. And basically what I mean by that is even though your product or service could be relevant to everyone doesn't mean it should be relevant to everyone. And this is usually the million-dollar question when building a brand is, Who does the brand serve? So, and if the brand serves multiple, multiple customer groups, how do those groups relate to each other and what is unique and different about them, right? So in general, you want to know who your early adopters are, right? Because if you market to all, you end up marketing to none, right? A friend to all is a friend to none. And it feels very natural for founders to cast a super wide net and try to get as many customers as possible. When in fact, if you can narrow narrow, narrow, narrow focus your customer bases and really kind of hone in on that ideal customer group to get you started, that's the best thing that you can do definitely during COVID because everyone wants to know kind of where you stand on these issues, sociopolitical issues right now. And then definitely here in the US, I don't, I'm certain that's not the case globally, but in the US that is the case right now. Customers want to feel like they belong in general, and that's relevant cross borders. So it feels very scary to be able to super hyperfocus your brand into one area or one customer segment. But if you don't do that and you end up trying to market to everybody at the same time, you end up diluting your messaging because you're trying to communicate too many different types of values to too many different types of customers, right? So the more, the more you narrow your focus, the better you'll be in positioning your brand. And again, we can do a whole class just on this, but in general, try to narrow focus as much as possible. It really goes back to those core foundations I talked about earlier, which is value and understanding your customers' needs. So in order for you to build a brand that's really going to resonate and be ready to scale and really provide the maximum output possible for your business, you really have to get that core customer piece nailed. And that doesn't mean that you can't start to serve a broader customer base moving forward. That's not that at all, right? But figuring out who those early adopters are in your business, um, it's going to be really important moving forward. And then I know we're kind of coming, um, at time, but I have a bonus one that I wanted to share with you. So This is another analogy that I love to teach. I call it the spinning plate analogy. I was not able to find a GIF of a spinning plate, so I found this guy here on a Segway juggling balls, but it's the same metaphor, so just go with me here for a second. So here's the life, here's the marketing life of a startup founder entrepreneur, right? You're like, imagine you're a circus performer. You've got one plate spinning, in this case it's this guy juggling soccer balls and basketballs, So let's say that the first plate is your product. Then you get another plate spinning, right? Let's say that that's your email marketing strategy. And then you spin up another plate, that's social media. Then how about another, blogging, maybe a podcast, then webinars. All these are different plates, right? All these are different balls that you have to juggle. The challenge for, for a startup founder or for a small business owner is spinning up a new plate or juggling a new ball, keeping it while keeping the already existing plates you have in rotation. And making those, making sure those things stay in rotation, right? So the reason I bring this up as a bonus one is because most small business owners, they end up trying to engage in too many marketing and branding activities at one time. They get one plate spinning, right, and then they drop it as soon as they get another one up. And there's all this overwhelming information out there that says you need to be on like every single platform and doing every single marketing strategy you can think of. Right? That's simply not true. That's one of the biggest fallacies when it comes to building a brand. It's about being specific about which marketing channel has your ideal audience, which marketing channel is the low-hanging fruit for you, which, which marketing channel or systems of channels can you spin up together to keep them moving within one ecosystem. So that's kind of really what this is about, is focus on the marketing, the marketing and branding activities that will allow you to keep those plates spinning and that will bring you the most value and the most growth moving forward. So I hope that was helpful and I hope that this GIF was a good kind of indication of that. All right, so thank you so much. I know we're gonna, we're gonna open up to questions now. I love the Q&A portion of this. So I kind of blew through this. I know it was a lot to cover. So I've included my information here. I definitely strongly encourage everyone, if you want to, get in touch with me. So the first is my Instagram handle, that's my personal handle. The second is our company handle, So House Inc. Our handle is relatively new, so give us a follow, show us some love. You're also welcome to hit me up on LinkedIn. And then email is my preferred method of communication. I put my email here for you as well. And then I wanted to share something with the, with the womenpreneurs that are in attendance today. I would love to extend an invitation for the women in our group today to come check out our community, you know, specifically come on board as an annual insider. As I mentioned in the beginning of this class, my goal is to break down the unique barriers women face when branding and marketing their businesses. So if you're the type of founder who likes to get in there, dig around, learn, embrace new tools, and you're trying to find smarter, faster ways to grow your brand, the SOS community is really a perfect you know, we could be a perfect extension for you. We have awesome member benefits like courses. Rachel is one of our community mentors, which I'm so happy about. She's going to be teaching a really good session on it for us on pitching. We have tools, all kinds of stuff. And we also have a private Slack channel. You can connect with other community mentors. You can connect with me directly, as well as our team members as well. So Rachel said it was okay that I shared it with the group, so I wanted to share with you guys here. So I created a coupon code for this community. It's FI2020. It gives you an extra 10% over the year. Our community is super affordable at $295, and we do that on purpose. These are US dollars, of course. We do that on purpose because we really believe in making marketing accessible. And so that particular coupon code gives you an additional 10% off over the year. And then there's something else that I wanted to provide specifically for this community since I love FI so much. Being an Annual Insider, those members do get 1-hour private coaching call with me as they get onboarded. And for the FI community, I'm going to be offering 2 private coaching calls for those who decide to join us as an Annual Insider. So go ahead and check it out. You can go to solace.com, check out our membership. Feel free to email me if you have any questions at all, and this coupon code will be live and available for you. Alright, and I think now we're ready for Q&A, right ladies?

Yes, yes, thank you so much, Jessica. So we have a lot of amazing questions that have come in from the audience, so let's just get started so we can get through as many as possible. Alright, so, and first of all, and thank you so much, Jessica, for this presentation. The one thing I have to say that really stuck with me is that a friend to all is a friend to none. I cannot tell you how many early-stage pitches I hear where the audience is not specific enough. And really kind of honing in on who your target audience is can really help with your marketing strategy so, so, so much. And Jessica reiterated that, and I had to add on because I totally, totally agree that it is very key to making a brand and ultimately, you know, a business really successful. Successful. So totally agree with being as specific as possible. Okay, and then moving on. So Ankit says, what role does word of mouth marketing play in building a brand?

Oh, huge. I would say it's the biggest. Word of mouth marketing is one of the most tried and true best things you can do for your brand. The problem, and I'll do air quotes, the problem is that word of mouth marketing is the hardest. It takes the longest, right? So typically when the founders that I know, right, they want to build a brand overnight. And there's this complete misconception of like you get on social media and then you've got a zillion followers and like poof, we're all famous. And that's just, that's just really not the reality for most of us, right? Building a brand is a series of tiny little steps. So if you're at a place where you can really focus on word of mouth marketing, it's the best, most organic, most sustainable way to grow a business. But it's one of the hardest because it takes the most time.

Fantastic. I hope that's helpful, Ankit. And then Monica says, how do you differentiate marketing your product when there are multiple players in the market? And I think maybe there's a two-part question here, which is first, How do you reach your audience the best? And then two, how do you create a brand that's really memorable?

Yeah, that's such a good question. So yeah, there's a couple of ways that we can kind of slice that. Um, can you ask me her exact question again?

Absolutely. It's how do you differentiate marketing your product when there are multiple players in the market? Let's say for example, I don't know what Monica's company is, but maybe it's in the education tech space, which I know is very crowded. How would somebody go about standing out in that space?

Yeah, so I believe it was Picasso who said this. I'm gonna butcher it. What did he say? Good artists copy, great artists steal. So the reason I love that saying is because it's kind of relevant here. There really is nothing— this is a strong statement for me to make, I realize how bold this is, but I've heard this from other experts as well kind of in my space— there really is nothing truly that is so unique that there's not one version of it that hasn't already been done before, right? Unless you are truly doing something, putting a product or solution into the marketplace that does not exist at all in any capacity, right? Some version of what you're doing already exists. And that's a good thing. That tells us that people who are your competitors have been there, done that. You can learn from them. So many of the women that are in our community, you know, they kind of have this like, not all, but it's like, oh, they're my competitor. So like, ah, get away. Like, must not, must not engage with. And the answer is actually no. Like, go reach out to your competitors, learn what they've done. What are they, what has worked for them? And what you'll find in having these conversations is that even though you might offer a similar solution, there's an infinite amount of ways that you can provide your solution in a different way. Maybe, I mean, this could like, this like, you could slice this in a zillion ways. Maybe you offer it differently. Maybe your accessibility is different, right? Maybe the unique, the solution that they are offering is targeting a different customer. Like I'll take our own business for example. You know how many marketers there are in the world? There's zillions of us. There's a zillion marketing people out there, right? And so how we have differentiated ourselves, and again, I'll just use myself since that's the best thing I personally know, how we have differentiated ourselves is that there's tons of communities out there that address female entrepreneurship as a whole, right? They talk about like lifestyle, there's finances, raising capital. I mean, there are so many assets of entrepreneurship. What I don't see is a community that really focuses on the ex— the ex— explicit issues that women face when branding, when growing and marketing their brands. So that's our differentiator is we're not trying to help women in every aspect of their entrepreneurial journey. There are amazing organizations we can partner with that do that. But what we are trying to do is kind of carve out our section of the universe that we are uniquely gifted in. So I hope that sort of answered your question. So in general, reach out to your, reach out to your competitors. Talk to them, figure out what they're doing, figure out what's worked and what, what hasn't worked. And then figure out really how you can provide that value to your customer. So again, it's not really about differentiating from your competitors. It's about bringing value to your customers because at the end of the day, the customer is going to decide which brand they want to engage with. So if you can first focus on value over differentiation, you will end up differentiating yourself by providing that value. I hope that makes sense.

It does, it does. And I would add too that like, you know, with this global audience, there's, you know, Jessica makes a really good point. There are competitors that you can look at, and there are also people who are playing in a different market but maybe are offering a similar solution, right? So you can definitely look into other regions for inspiration for branding as well. I like to look at other industries as a marketer. That's That's something I like to look at and see what other industries are doing and see if it applies or if we can translate that to what we're working on. So that was amazing advice. One of the, Vishal, well, the next question is Vishal asks, how do you build trust for a new venture? Which building trust is huge for a brand. So thoughts on that?

Oh, these are great questions. These are like existential marketing questions. I love it. So trust comes comes from being authentic, which is again that term that we've used, that we've overused. Trust is about being authentic and open. It's exactly that graph that I showed with the circles on it. So being authentic and open and about understanding your values. So people do business with people. Customers gladly will pay more for things that they believe in and they gladly will pay more for brands that they emotionally resonate with. So in order for your customer to resonate with you, you have to know where you stand on the things that you care about in your business, right? So if you are a food company, you know, are you an ethical— are you like curating ethical ingredients and is that important to you? And if so, why? You know, if you are serving female founders like we are, how are you doing that? Why? Why is it important to you? Building a brand is really personal, even for the biggest brands. And that's why oftentimes it's so hard to kind of figure out like what the exact right way to build a brand is. So to build trust is about being consistent and about being authentic. And how you express your authenticity is going to be unique to you and going to be unique to your business. But if you are very, like, to your core, you believe in these values, whatever those values are, and you make it the brand's sort of guiding star to live and breathe those values consistently over time is how you build trust.

And for founders who maybe are a little bit hesitant to put so much of themselves on social media, because I do feel like that's a big trend, right, for founders to sort of share a lot about their lives and who they are on social media. Sometimes that's not comfortable for people. Do you have any tips for founders in terms of maybe separating themselves a little bit from their brand but still building brand trust? Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, absolutely. The brand itself can build trust. It doesn't always have to be the founder with their face behind the camera, right? It could be, we X company believe in Y, right? And this is why we believe in it. Or We X company express our brand values in these ways. So, you know, for those of you who are kind of like teeter-tottering on what percentage you want to be involved and like be the face of the brand, you know, that's really a personal choice. What I will say about that is if you do decide, so like, what's the best way to say this? If 100% of the communication of the brand, right, everything is in like percentages of 100, If you, the founder, only feel confident with showcasing 10% of yourself and 90% of it being the brand, that's okay. However, that 10%, make sure you're authentic 100% of that 10%, you know? And so like, however you as the founder want to show up as the brand, certainly if you're a small business, buyers want to know who's the person? What's the story behind this brand? So it's always going to create a human connection when you can connect with other humans. And that's why there's such a trend right now of like the founder is all over the place. That doesn't need to be the case though, right? So you can, as I said before, you can speak as the brand. So like, we believe in X, we want to do Y, we see a world where this exists. And speak as a whole versus speaking as an individual.

That makes perfect sense. That's excellent advice. I would ask you, Graham and Eric both have the same question. Do you have any tips for coming up with a brand name and/or slogan?

Oh man. Well, the first thing I would do if you're coming with a brand name is make sure the domain is available. I know that sounds really like tactical and like silly, but there's a lot of founders I've worked with who have spent hours and hours and hours coming up with the best name, and then they go to buy the domain and then it's not available, or it's like a zillion dollars. So availability is one. And second of all, what I will say to that is you build a brand based on the building blocks of your brand. So, and what I mean by that is like, Google is what it is today because we know it as Google, right? But what does the brand name Google actually say? Like, it's literally the word Google. Like, it doesn't say anything about the internet. It doesn't say anything about like, like what Google is, right? Same thing for Twitter. So when you, when you sort of like, again, like peel back all the shininess to the brand, right? Twitter is just like, it was just like some made-up like random name for social media, right? It's a bird. Like, it actually has nothing to do with social. Same thing for Starbucks. And these are all big giant brands that we've, that we've grown to associate within certain categories. So what I mean by that is it's not specifically the name, right? You make the name and then you build off of the name. Your values, goes back to that value system, your values, your beliefs as a company, your products or services, your solutions, all these things are what make the name. The name alone doesn't make the brand. Does that make sense? Is that helpful?

Yes. Yeah. And there's, I think so. And there's definitely different types of brand names as well. Right? So a lot of the ones you talked about are like, I believe they're the fantastical type logos is what they're called or something like that, as opposed to like a descriptive brand name or something. Yeah. There's a, there's a lot to go through there. But having the domain is by far number one. Key.

Like, I don't know, in the States we use GoDaddy. I don't know how it is in other— I don't know if it's the same globally, but like there's a bunch of domain, like make sure the domain is available. And if it's not, don't do it, right? Make sure it's not trademarked, like, you know, these sort of things.

Absolutely. And so another question is regarding budget. So marketing budgets are usually a big topic of conversation, and marketing is a cost. Cost, right? It's, it's the, you know, some people think of it as the opposite of sales, right? So you're bringing in money, you need to spend money to make money, etc. And so how can— do you have any advice for founders who are really just getting started to minimize their budgets and/or, you know, use different tactics to just not spend so much, especially at this time, but still get their brand out there?

Yeah, so I think the best way to do that is like everyone listening to kind of map out all the different, you know, the fancy term is customer acquisition, right? So map out all the different channels that people can find you. So literally, if you like take a giant piece of paper or poster board and put your brand in the center and like draw a line like the sun, what are all the channels, potential channels that people can find you? And, you know, reaching out and building partnerships, most of the time that is not costly in terms of budget, but it is costly in terms of time. So that's why it just goes back to what is the core service, who is the customer, and— well, it's actually flipped. It's who's the customer always first, right? And then how is your product or solution addressing the needs and wants and desires of that customer? And then it's what are the different acquisition channel channels to communicate this to the right customer. So it's really just a matchmaking exercise. It's here's my brand, here's my customer, here's where my customer is hanging out online, how do I connect the dots? And certainly there's an infinite amount of marketing verticals that can always happen. And that really goes, it goes back to that like plate spinning scenario I had mentioned as that like bonus one. So that's why you have to be really specific about your plates. Plates, right? So if your plate is really costly and it's really heavy and it's gonna, it's gonna cause you to sort of fall over and you can't balance the other plates, right? Probably not the best plate. So it's really about understanding where your ideal customers are, how do they make decisions, and where can you access them. I will tell you right now, one of the best things that I've done for my own company and also for other brands I've worked with is collaborations with other other brands. So is there an entity or some sort of organization that has access to the customers that you want to serve, right? And then how can you bring value to their brand and vice versa? And that's a really great way to get the highest impact for the lowest amount of cost, right? Because you're building your brand and your brand awareness off of the credibility of another brand. Right? So the barrier to entry is a lot lower if you're able to kind of partner your brand with someone else who already sort of is a trusted leader within that space. And that is a free thing that you can do. It does not cost a lot of money, but, but you have to be like very strategic about these organizations that you're going to partner with. So that's just one way that I would recommend going about doing that.

Absolutely. A target list of partnerships can be huge for growth and just understanding like where you want your brand to go versus where you are now and have that like top tier of like very, you know, sort of ambitious partnerships that you would like to have. Yeah, I think that could be huge. That's excellent advice.

All right.

And unfortunately, we're already out of time. And so I would love to ask you, what is the— your final tip for founders who are building their brands right now, who are very early stage? Any one major takeaway you'd like to send with that?

Yeah, it sounds very simple, but the biggest takeaway is patience and grace, honestly. Like, I know, you know, we just get so caught up in the world of Instagram and how amazing and how hustling we all are, and like, all of it's crap. Like, right? It takes time to build a brand, and particularly for marketing, it takes a lot of experimentation. A lot. So I have quite a lot of advice, but like, I think, you know, to kind of wrap it up, don't be afraid to experiment. Don't be afraid to try new things, right? Exactly what I taught today, this big shift gives you the opportunity now to experiment. You are like— COVID has leveled the playing field from a marketing perspective for you to access new customers in different unique and experiential ways because people are looking for unique solutions now differently than they were before. Those habitual buying behaviors have now been changed. So don't be afraid to experiment. And it's one step, it's one foot in front of the other. It's not these giant marketing leaps and then like poof, you're on Oprah or like whatever, and then you're famous. It's a series of tiny steps. And it's a series of experimentation along the way.

Wonderful. What a great piece of advice to take with you to start your day or to end your day, founders who have joined us today. And then I just want to say one more time, thank you so much to Jessica for providing your time and your expertise. Please go check out Jessica at SoHouse.com and learn more about how she's helping women entrepreneurs build their startups. And their companies. And also, if you have any further questions or want to learn more about Founder Institute, you can find out more at fi.co/join/webinar. All right, everyone, have a great day. Thank you, Rachel.

Bye, everybody.

Thanks for coming.