Brittany Barnhart Teaches You How to Attract and Convert Your Audience With the POWER Method

My purpose behind Powerhouse Brand Studio is to help people just build businesses with ease because we all started our business to have freedom. We all wanted to do what we are super passionate about. And I love helping people identify opportunities to just live their best lives. And so if we can do that by creating a brand that doesn't require them to be so present every single day, then I absolutely love doing that.

Brittany Barnhart is a pro at helping entrepreneurs align their vision with their business.

Operations so they can attract and convert their target audience.

And today, she'll teach you how to do that using her signature power method. This is the launch your business podcast because we know starting a business is challenging, but it doesn't have to be confusing. Each week we'll give you the tactical advice and the necessary tools to scale scale your business without feeling burnt out. I'm Terry Rice, business development consultant and staff writer here at Entrepreneur Magazine. Let's dive in. I've noticed that there are three common.

Reasons why entrepreneurs fail here.

They are lack of clarity, lack of confidence, and lack of conviction. So clarity comes from knowing what you do and who you do it for. Confidence comes from believing in your ability.

To help these people.

And conviction is a function of finding.

A meaningful purpose in your work.

That's why today we're chatting with Brittany Barnhart. And fortunately, she has a signature framework.

That addresses all of these issues.

Brittany, who goes by B, is a brand and business strategist. She originally started off as a designer, but grew to realize that many of her clients needed more than just a fancy logo to find success. They needed to completely overhaul their brand and business strategy. And that is how her signature power method came about. And today she'll share it with you. We'll cover how to define the purpose of your business and the impact you want to have. How to learn more about your target audience through social listening and competitive intelligence. And you'll also discover how to attract and convert customers while also leveraging efficient workflows.

Brittany, great to have you here today. Do you mind just introducing yourself?

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm be the brand and business strategist behind Powerhouse Brand Studio, and I help my clients build a brand that attract and convert their audiences by utilizing my power method.

In my experience, people like you and I, so experts who have struggled as well normally have more empathy for the people that we're helping. Right. Because we know what it feels like and the impact it can have on your personal and your professional life. So what are some common problems that your your Clients or prospects have that are again, common, but just super impactful. If they can, they, they can solve for them.

Yeah. So a lot of times some common themes that really transitioned me to doing solely branded business strategy were my clients were coming to me and they didn't really have like a fully thought out plan. And so I would be offering like branded web design, but we'd start to identify like, who is your audience? Why do they need you, what's important to them? And so there's all these questions that would help them run their business better that they didn't really have a plan for is more so like if I get a logo, if I get a website, then I can run a business. People will want to hire me when that's not just inherently the case. That was the most consistent thing that I saw my clients were experiencing when they started working with me.

Awesome. I dig it. And you mentioned earlier that you have this power method. Can you walk through what that means?

Yeah. So the power method is this five step process that I take all of my clients through to help them build that brand that attracts and converts their audiences. The P stands for purpose. So what is your unique purpose for owning your business? What is the impact that you want to have with your business?

How do you help someone find their purpose? That sounds like there's some, some inner work that takes place there.

Yeah, a lot of it is really honing in on their brand story. And so we kind of start digging into why do they start their business in the first place, what is the impact that they want to have? And so recently I had a client who just quit their job within the last three or four months. And she was just like, I have no idea what I'm doing. And so through our work together, we honed in on her brand story on like, what is the impact of what she wants to do? Why is this important to her? And so we're able to develop that unique brand story that is important when we're communicating our business to our audience because everybody wants to know why we started our businesses. It's a really great storytelling tool. And so a lot of that is some inner work on their part as long as they're comfortable sharing that. And just. It's a lot of questions.

Yeah, I always say that as an entrepreneur, especially a solopreneur, your only unique differentiator is actually your personality. It's your personal brand. And if you don't know how to express that, you're stuck. Right. Because you're just another person with the same Services, everybody else, why should they buy it from you? So I dig that. Okay, so the next letter is going to be O, if I'm not incorrect. So, so what's the O stand?

Observation. So with that step, we start to observe your audience and your competitors. And why this is so beneficial is because obviously, like, we have this brand story. But the other piece of having the opportunity to unlock your revenue is understanding who your ideal client is. That's where we identify why they would even want to hire you in the first place, what their journey is like to discovering you and wanting to work with you and then also with your competitors, figuring out, what is that, like, small little space in the Internet that you can carve out for you that is unique to what you offer. And so as an example, I had a client last year who she had a fairly decent understanding of who her ideal client was. And so we worked together to hone in that in on it even further. And we identified that she had one audience instead of two. And so it became easier for her to create messaging and better content. And within a couple of months, she was able to double and triple her revenue because we had gained that clarity and were able to actually speak clearly to who her audience was.

Did that encourage you to raise your rates when you're hearing stories like this or what it is?

Yeah, it's really funny doing this work because a lot of it is just helping clients make their business better. And so a lot of the clients that I work with are like, don't charge me more, but you should charge people more, just not me next time.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break here, but when we come back, we'll talk about how you can do more with less by setting up efficient workflows. Just get started. If you've ever looked for tips on launching a business, just get started seems to come up a lot. And while that's vaguely motivational, it does not provide any real direction. Because the next logical question for anyone would be, well, how do I get started? What specifically should I do? Well, if you're looking to quickly start a business without the confusion, risk and pressure of doing something entirely new, I've got a solution for you. It's called the Solopreneur's Fast Track, a step by step process on how to start a business using the skills you.

Already have and actually enjoy using.

So let's say your favorite part of a previous job was email marketing. You'll learn how to start a business offering other companies advice on how they can improve their email marketing. Or maybe you are really good at integrating complicated tech tools. You can help other organizations do the same thing without the need to bring on a full time hire. So the main point here is that everything you need to start a business is already within you. You don't need a cool website or fancy tools. And by completing the course, you'll also discover a simpler approach for attracting clients without using complicated funnels or cheesy sales tactics. You can finish it over a weekend and start making money in as little as 30 days. You'll gain the clarity and confidence you need to start your business and receive a one page business plan so you can immediately apply what you've learned. Get started today and receive a 20% discount by heading to terryrice co. Fast. That's terryrice co. Fast. And we're back with B. Let's hop into it.

Next up is W. What's W stand for?

W is workflows. And so now that we've done the work of identifying your purpose and understanding who your audience is, this is kind of where the real magic happens. And so workflows, we start to talk about what is your service funnel? Are there any opportunities that you're leaving on the table by not having any services based on what we know about your audience specifically? And so it's a lot of creating those revenue generating opportunities to not only bring that income in now, but also create long term leads for your business. Additionally, we're looking at your internal processes. So how are you onboarding clients? Is it easy for you and the client? Are there opportunities to have a virtual assistant to be able to do that for you? We're also looking at offboarding and identifying ways to increase the lifetime value of a client. And so it's really just in whatever ways that your business is working and operating. How can we streamline it and make it better or what can we create to make it better?

Can you give me an example? Let's, let's go deeper here because if you have really good workflows, and I'm talking about tools, automations, things like that, you free yourself up for the more strategic things that you should be focusing on. So can you give me an idea of like a workflow you've set up for somebody?

Yeah, so a workflow that I actually worked on a client with this weekend, her own VIP day was onboarding clients and minimizing the amount of emails that she was sending to a client. So we walked step by step through the entire process from discovery call to actually like signing the client to sending proofs. And so she had recently signed up for Honeybook. And so we identified opportunities that, given her existing process, how we could remove steps and then automate that as much as possible. And so through collaborating together, we shortened the amount of emails that we were sending. We also sent more information to the client to be super clear and answer any questions before they even had them. Because, because these were questions that she was already asking and wasn't including in any materials. And so I was like, well, if people are asking these consistently, we should include these in your onboarding materials to ensure that like, they feel good about their investment into your business. And so shorten the amount of emails, made sure that we were touching on important points that people were genuinely asking for. And then creating templates for any type of email or any type of proof she would send. And so we created a, a couple of various for different instances she would experience in her business so that all she'd have to do is maybe type in the small little like personalized note or upload an image and just send it off and like that's all that's required of her. And so while her onboarding process might take an hour now, which isn't awful, it's now going to take her 10 to 15 minutes and it's going to be easy to hand off to somebody else.

And you mentioned honeybook, which sounds like a tool that you can use to automate these, these processes. But what are other tools you use, like just in the moment? So like project management maybe, or just planning. What are some other tools you use? Because I imagine right now a lot of our listeners are taking notes, so this would be really helpful.

Yeah, so some of my favorite platforms are obviously Honeybook. I absolutely adore that platform. I love ConvertKit because it allows me to easily create a branded experience through email marketing and so I can create custom content for my audience. I love Notion. I'm a huge notion nerd. Everything is on Notion, from my client portals to marketing to daily and weekly tasks and everything like that. And then the last platform that I'll say is I love Zapier. It's such a powerful platform because it allows you to connect two different websites and it creates automations for you. And so I'll use that to connect my Honeybook to my notion so I can import intake questionnaires into Notion, so I can just continue to add notes to it and just really remove steps that I was doing previously. So those are currently my like top four favorite tools that I use on a very Frequent basis.

Yeah. And these are all low code or no code tools, as the saying goes. But, and I know there's a learning curve, but I always encourage people to push through because once you learn how to do this stuff, you're saving a lot of time and money because years ago you had to hire a team of people to do this stuff. You had the email person, you had the, the project management person, so and so forth. Now you just have this one tool. But on my end, like my virtual assistant handles all those tools, so I'm, I'm aware of how they, they work. Uh, I don't want to have my hands in them too much. But even if that's the route you want to go, you can have one assistant who uses all these tools and it's possible for someone to do that with low, you know, without being an expert in these things. So, yeah, I think it's a, it's a great approach, but what letter are we on now? E. All right. Yeah. What's the, what's the E?

E is for execution. And so back when we touched on the purpose stage, it's at that point with my clients where we identify some goals for them. And so we set some immediate goals based on like how this year is going in their business. And we also set those long term goals. And so the execution comes with figuring out what's, what are the workflows that we should actually start building right now based on what your goals are. So through the work that we're doing together, we talk about a lot of stuff and it can be really overwhelming to some clients. And so we prioritize what we're going to execute on first based on their goals. And so some clients are really like feeling terrible about their website. So what we'll end up doing is making a better onboarding process and ensuring that we're reducing the amount of clicks it takes to actually get in touch with them for other clients. They have no idea how to even get a client. And so what we'll end up doing is creating a service and the entire workflow for, for that so they can start testing it and refining it. So it really depends on where that person is at based on what we execute first.

Have you ever had someone come to you with goals that just weren't good? And how, and if so, how do you guide them in the right direction? Because what I found is sometimes people will come to me with symptoms of a larger problem and they think solving the symptom is the goal. And I'm like, no, like, that's the symptom. Like, really what the problem is this? So how do you redirect or re educate people when they're so gung ho about this one thing? And based on your experience, you're like, this ain't it. Like, what's your approach for that?

Yeah, it's interesting that you say that too, because, like, I've had some clients who come in, or just some folks in general who set goals that are actually more tasks than they are goals. And so it's like, I want to set this email up, I want to do this thing. And I'm like, those are more tasks. Those aren't necessarily like goals for your business. And so what we end up doing as going back to that purpose phase of, like, what is the impact that you want to have? Why are you passionate about what you want to do? And why does any of this really even matter to you? And another question that I tend to ask is, like, what are your income goals? How many sales or clients do you need to obtain to hit those revenue goals so that we can try to refocus them to make sure that way we're setting those goals that are relevant to where they're at now, but then figuring out how to move forward? So it's just a lot of, like, sometimes very personal questions if they're not comfortable talking about money. But yeah, that's how I usually approach with my clients.

Got it, got it. All right, last letter.

R. R is for refinement. And so a lot of having a brand in a business, I mean, we grow and our brands grow with us. You know, we continue to learn and evolve as humans, and the same goes for our brands. And so the refinement phase comes with, as you roll out these workflows, really identifying was it effective? What are some maybe blind spots that I'm not seeing? Was there any point in the process that I could have made it easier or that it's just simply not working? And so a lot of the stuff that we're doing is based on their existing workflows or like, what they want to happen. And so as they start to build them out, it's really crucial to actually test it out and refine it to just continuously make it better and not feel stagnant in the growth of their business.

One thing I do every week is I ask myself four questions. What should I start? Stop, continue, change. So that's the refinement process on my end. But what's this look like on a tactic level for you when you're going through this, this, this phase with your, with your clients.

Yeah. So one of the things that I was working on a client with this week is that she currently has a free opt in course that leads to her group program. And so we're finding that she's actually having hard time getting people into even her free course because people aren't really quite grasping what they're getting, what they're doing and things like that. And so we hit this refinement phase of, well, if people aren't quite understanding what we're hoping them to understand, let's take a look at your messaging. Like, is that communicating effectively? Is there any way that we can make this even clearer on what they're actually going to obtain? Another thing that we're considering is adding in a step before that of like, you know, if she's working on teaching them mindful eating in a mini course, we're going to take a step before that and have an opt in for meal planning because that's what people are asking for. And then we can lead them into learning how to eat mindfully and then into a group program that she's doing. So it's really just looking at like, you know, conversion rates, how many people are opening your emails, if you're getting any feedback from your clients, the conversations that are being started and things like that's really determine is this actually working or am I just hoping that it's gonna work?

When I see someone having trouble giving away something for free, it makes me think maybe the idea is just not that good. Right. So that's just my me being maybe kind of stoic. Right.

So on your end, I mean, how.

Do you communicate with people when it seems like they just don't have a good idea? It's not like any step in the process whatsoever is like this, this ain't good.

So that question usually comes with, is this what your ideal client is asking for? A lot of the times what I find with my clients is we're so used to like our jargon of like with the fields and the industries that we're in, we have our established jargon and so we go into creating messaging and creating these ideas with that base level of knowledge, just assuming that everybody else also have that has that same level of knowledge. Now our audiences are incredibly smart. Like they're not stupid at. But it just comes down to, are you using too much jargon to explain what you're doing? And if you are, how can we make it easier for people to understand? And so when Those ideas come up that, like, aren't necessarily working. It's more of a conversation of, like, this could be a good idea. But is your audience really asking for this right now, or are they maybe five steps back and aren't quite ready for this yet? So how can we kind of create a journey for them to learn this one thing that they are searching for online and need immediate help with and nurture them into teaching them the skill that you want to teach them?

Yeah, I think it's great to consider the customer journey and where they're at when you first meet them, as opposed to assuming they want to be on step six. Like, meet them at step one. And your point around using plain language, I like, because the example I gave before was my daughter. When she was six years old, she lost her first tooth and she came to me and she said, hey, dad, is the tooth fairy going to give me a dollar? And I said, look, Lana, there's no tooth fairy. There's no Santa Claus, there's no Easter bunny. None of that stuff exists. And here's why I said it's because this was the height of the pandemic. All my kids were home for, like, months already without me getting a break. So I was a little frustrated. But she said to me, she's like, okay, that's fine. Just sneak in my room while I'm sleeping and put a dollar under my pillow. I'm like, that's when I realized she didn't care about the process. She cared about the outcome. But as business owners, often we talk about our process all over our website. Step one, this, Step two, this. You'll get this so on, so forth. Like, just talk about the outcome. I don't care how many worksheets I'm getting or the features, the benefits, what's the outcome? And if you can say that in plain language, you'll create a moment of relevance with your audience as opposed to confusing them to your point and be able to get some more sales. Okay, so pretend there's someone out there listening who has a business and things just aren't clicking, they're not making enough money, or it's not consistent. What's the first thing they should do, or a few things they should do just to see what's going on that they can fix.

That's a very great and relevant question because I worked with a client recently in a VIP day on doing exactly that. So they had just put their job within, like, the last couple of months. And I referenced it earlier when I was kind of talking through the power method, and she had no idea how to get clients. It was more so if I just post about my services, people want to pay me when we all know that's like not necessarily the case. And so she's struggling to get clients. And so through our VIP day, what we ended up doing was we first identified who her audience was, and so we got super clear on who she specifically enjoys working with and why her service is important into their lives. From there, we identified that maybe her ideal client isn't quite ready for this, like $500 a month service, you know, so, like, when we think about our audience, can we ask them to go from zero to $500 a month? You know, in all of our industries, it really depends on, like, what you're.

Actually offering, lead to growth and discontinue activities that aren't aligned with our overall mission. Thanks for listening and I'll catch up with you next time. Apply what you've learned on today's show. You'll find the show notes and more resources at TerryRice co. Podcast. Again, that's TerryRice co. And the best way to support this podcast is by subscribing, telling a friend, and leaving a review. Also, you can get more tips by following me on Instagram @TerryRice or follow me on LinkedIn. This episode was produced by Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio and edited by Dan Lardy. Special thanks to my wife, Dominique, for keeping our kids relatively quiet as I recorded started. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.