We ask 5 smart voices for their 100-word take on 1 provocative brand challenge. Today’s question is . . .

What did you learn from your biggest branding misstep?

Jessika Hepburn

“In my almost ten years of entrepreneurship I’ve built, and worn, a number of brands and identities. Most of them weren’t all that awesome and some of them were downright terrible! Looking through my early branding attempts is like tripping through old school year books — you cringe at the hair but are also attracted by how young and recklessly stupid you were. I was at a Veda Hille concert years ago where she chatted with the audience about her first demo tape. She asked us, and this stuck with me, ‘How could you let me be so young in public?’ My whole business evolution has been one long process of being young in public. I am not formally trained, I have no bits of paper certifying I know what I am doing, everything I know I learned the hard way . . . by messing it up. I can say one thing for sure about my branding (and life) adventures: I’ve turned a gazillion wrong corners but every single one takes me in the right direction.”

Jessika Hepburn is the editor and creative force behind Oh My! Handmade, a community where the diverse creative entrepreneurs of the world connect to build the work of their dreams, learn how put food in the fridge, and  find a big hug when things don’t go as planned (and they never go as planned).

 

Dave Ursillo

“My biggest branding misstep was thinking of my brand as something different than who I am as a human being. That includes my name, face, personality, and sharing my flaws and missteps just as much as my successes and victories. Your brand is as simple as being as ‘most you’ as you possibly can be, and proudly owning what you believe and why you do what you do. To many, that’s more terrifying than tossing impersonal copy around a $50 logo. What I tell every writer, artist, creative, blogger, or budding entrepreneur is that your face is your logo, so show it; your story is your mission statement, so tell it; your life is your business, so live it.”

Dave Ursillo is a writer and entrepreneur who teaches creative self-activators how to live and love the journey while forging new freedom in their lives through their beloved crafts. Join his writers’ group at LiteratiWriters.com.

Brit Hanson

“I washed the poetry
out of my brand.

I replaced
the collections
with code;
my pencils
with pens;
Richard Wright
with his rigid Granny.

No, I’m not
being coy.

I lost my way
the moment I smeared,
crinkled and tossed
those lyrics and lines,
that intuitive atlas,
down the laundry shoot
with my sweaty tees.

Hurry to the basement
there’s still time.

You cannot —
must not —
wash out
the thing
that is
your poetry.”

Brit is a poet and digital storyteller who offers story-based social media services at BritHanson.com.

Jenn Gibson

“I didn’t have a clear vision of aesthetic or identity for Roots of She in the beginning; I had this idea for a project, something I needed to birth, and I leapt and dove right in, pulling in pieces of previous projects and online journals. It wasn’t a good fit, but it was enough so I could begin, so I went with it. Within three months, I had revamped so many core items: banner, social media buttons, color scheme — and heck, while I was changing things, I moved from Blogger to WordPress. The end result of that evolution was a clean, simplistic site with an abundance of white space and sleeker lines.

“The huge lesson in it all was to slow down: No, things don’t have to be ‘perfect’ to launch, but not rushing the pre-launch, getting clear on the basics — from blogging platform to color palette to posting schedule — is so important and saves so much time and energy in the end.”

Jenn Gibson is a life coach and the creator of Roots of She, a collection of true stories and tender wisdom for women, by women.

 

Tamarisk Saunders-Davies

“There’s no big, face-palm moment but I understand the word ‘brand’ to mean the promise of an experience, so branding missteps happen in my business any time I am not delivering on the type of experience I am promising. That might be a blog post I think is going to have everyone piling into the comments and sharing everywhere — and it has zero effect. It might be the somatic sensation that Twitter feels weird for me right now. Usually, things like that mean the experience that people seek when they hang out with me online isn’t coming through for them.“

Tamarisk is a Connection Catalyst (AKA life coach) who helps courageous women take their lives from average to awesome.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What’s been your biggest branding misstep and what did you learn from it? And — out of curiosity — looking back, were there any signs you should’ve seen that would’ve told you were in the midst of a misstep?

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I built my first business on the power of cool.

It was a brick and mortar retail store called THE BLISSFUL in my Ohio hometown. (These are its blog archives.) 2000 square feet of funky, French-inspired lifestyle goods — everything from organic cotton t-shirts to upholstered chaise lounges to a stone bust imported from Egypt to Scandinavian stationery. Four years of harder work than I’ve ever done in my life — oftentimes back-breaking, dispiriting, pride-swallowing work — alongside my (cool) mom (that’s her at left, across from me at an Asian fusion restaurant), who was my unofficial business partner and the shop’s visual stylist.

It was a cool store.

We sold cool stuff that we merchandised in a way that made it look even more cool; other shop owners would drive in from states away to surreptitiously photograph the shop and get ideas for their own displays. Oh, she just  . . . we could hear them whispering one to the other as they ambled from display to display, narrating aloud the elements that made up our vision.

We won an independent retail industry award and got cool perks because of it, like comped hotel rooms when we traveled to market. I was invited to serve on the Advisory Board of a retail trade magazine.

Our customers mythologized us as shopkeepers. “My mother knows the owner,” one man who’d called the shop told me . . . about me. “The owner travels back and forth to France all the time.” I’d never been, and had never claimed to have been, to France.

A writer and stylist for a high-profile shelter magazine called me to ask if she could do a story and a photographic feature on my home (assuming it was as cool as my shop was). At the time, I was living with my parents and sleeping in my childhood bedroom.

I got used to being a merchant of cool*.

(Hat tip here to the fabulous documentary of the same name — whose topic is not exactly what I’m talking about in this post.)

When I closed my shop and started freelancing full-time, I assumed that my new Brand Proposition could easily be the same as the one from my retail business: buy from me because my brand, my POV, and my “eye” are cool, and this is the coolest approach to home decor/gifts/personal accessories copywriting/branding and marketing consulting you can get.

I intentionally shaped my freelance brand as aspirational in flavor, because aspirational lifestyle retail — over the top displays that bore little to no resemblance to how people would actually use these objects in their own homes, but that was what was cool and wow-worthy about it — was what I knew and did well.

I tried marketing my freelance business on the power of cool for a year or so.

I trusted that the Right People would be attracted to my brand, because, well, they’d just “get it” or they wouldn’t. I would’ve bet the farm that just “being myself in my brand’ was the best way to shape it. I ended up working with all different sorts of clients that year. Some of them were Right Enough for my phase in business, some of them — weren’t.

I wrote sales page copy for myself that was way too meta. My $127 audio course converted at about 1% of my list size. I cycled through highs and lows, both with income and in entrepreneurial self-esteem.

Then one day, a mentor gave me a b*tch slap of a newsflash:

“You know why your sales pages aren’t converting? It’s because you’re trying to market your brand on the power of your personality. Like, hey, look how cool I am, don’t you want to spend time with me and my brand because we’re so cool? You need to talk benefits. Results. What they get. People would LOVE to throw money at you if you’d just tell them what they’re f*cking getting!”

A-ha!

People aren’t really drawn to our brands by us, because of us. It’s not our cool factor, our witty one-liners in audio interviews, or even our jaw-dropping tagline that calls them in.

People are drawn to our brands by what they need from us to be more of themselves or to have the life they’re trying to create.

In order for them to realize we’re offering what they need from us, they need to believe that:

1. we see them,
2. we get what’s challenging for them, and
3. we have a thoughtful solution.

Cool alone isn’t cutting it.

I’m not anti-cool by any means. I love cool. I refuse to assign any one tantamount definition of cool to cool.

Cool is subjective. Cool has 32 flavors and then some. Cool looks, sounds, acts, thinks, and feels differently on each of us — and on each of our brands.

As for me, I stepped down from the platform I was intent on riding around on (to protect myself and my energy as an introvert), and I got wise to how to really connect with my Right People. And it wasn’t — shockingly, to me! — about modeling ‘cool.’

Neither was it, for me, about becoming hyper-accessible or more available for Skype chats with everyone who wants to say hello, or endless emailing back and forth with people who love to discuss ideas but have no immediate intention of ever becoming clients.

For me, it was about (and still is about) designing a business that addresses my ideal clients’ true needs, core desires, and persistent questions. It’s not about me living out my own journey through the offers I create. It’s about composing a brand story that speaks to my Right People’s identity at many levels.

It’s about approaching branding, copywriting, and marketing with empathy, taking the focus off of me and how I want to feel and looking at life and the problems my business solves through my ideal clients’ eyes.

My brand today is a reflection of my style and aesthetic preferences, sure, but you better believe I conceptualized it to please my Right People first. I can do that easily now, because I know who they are.

We hear this advice all the time — focus on your readers’ needs, step into their shoes — but have you really done it yet? (Hint: If you had, you’d already know exactly what your Ideal Client wants to buy from you.)

The risk of self-centric branding and marketing — marketing your business on the power of your own personality, the juice from your own vein of cool, or on the stoked embers of how you want to feel — is building a business that misses out on serving Right People because you’re expecting them to look just like you.

Conflating yourself and your Ideal Clients is the quickest way to build an ego-centric business.

Assuming that you must design your business and your brand to serve a past version of yourself — I can’t think of a more limiting belief for a business owner.

When you conflate your Ideal Client and yourself, you fail to see and understand who they are because you’re so caught up in Doing You through your business. You assume their needs, challenges, questions, stumbling blocks, and pain points are the very ones you yourself have struggled with — or are still struggling with.

In some cases, this is absolutely true.

And in other cases, it’s absolutely untrue.

Have you considered that maybe your Right Person doesn’t have all that much in common with you psychologically or emotionally, and may be drawn to work with you for that very reason?

Are you sure you can only be satisfied in your business if you’re serving people a lot like you?

Ego-centric businesses, while they might attract big headlines, don’t necessarily have big bottom lines.

It’s time for a new paradigm in branding.

Here at The Voice Bureau, we begin with each client’s Voice Values, three to five core features of your naturally powerful voice that you already rely on when you’re connecting with readers, clients, and colleagues.

Think of your Voice Values as the current of Empathy that flows through your brand. Your Right People are drawn to you because of your Voice Values. So whether we’re rewriting your About page, helping you finesse a sales page for your new online program, or putting together a visual creative brief you can hand off to a web designer — we start by looking at how you’re already primed to connect with your ideal clients. (No navel-gazing or psychoanalysis on your part necessary.)

Discover Your Voice Values today, right here, for free. Enter your best email address below and click Go.

 

In the comments, would you share with us:

Where have you caught yourself conflating your own journey with your Ideal Clients’ journey? Or what assumptions have you made about your Right People that you’re ready to let go of so you can really serve them? I’ll share my story if you’ll share yours.

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Voice Notes is an every-Friday feature. We take you inside the online brand presence of a business owner we think you should know — through a dozen evocative sentence-starters.

Abby (Chief Voice Bureau Officer) says:

One of my intentions behind Voice Notes is to let you see more deeply into the mind, heart, soul, and lifestyle of a brand creator with whom we’re closely affiliated. In many cases, that means we’re an actual affiliate for this person’s service, program, or experience — we believe so much in what this person has to offer we’re willing to put our name behind it, and we receive thank-you monies when you purchase the offer through our affiliate link. Today is such an example.

I’d like to introduce you to Monica McCarthy, the Founder of Show & Tell Stories Productions, a boutique production company helping small businesses, entrepreneurs, coaches, and creatives share their stories on camera. When I learned about Monica’s newest creation, Front & Center, I knew I wanted to share this with you. Front & Center is an online multimedia experience designed to help you get your story in the spotlight. In other words, it’s a video-making course perfect for microbusinesses like yours and mine. Most of my clients and readers — and I! — are wanting to add more video to our brand conversations and we know the time to get on it is now. I haven’t seen a better course out there to share with you than what Monica has put together.

I’ll let Monica tell you (and show you) more about it here.

(The link above is our affiliate link, which means if you click it and eventually buy Front & Center, you’ll receive a Priority Code for $55 off our popular Voice Profile service. IMPORTANT: If you’d like to purchase Front & Center plus the 1:1 session with Monica, clear your browser cache, come back to this page, and click this link instead. We’ll email you your Voice Profile Priority Code as soon as we receive a notification you’ve purchased through our link. )

Monica McCarthy, Actress, Producer, Storyteller

Monica is an actress and the Founder of Show & Tell Stories Productions.
Twitter: @MissMMcCarthy, Facebook: SHOW & TELL, YouTube: Monica McCarthy

My top 3-5 Voice Values are:

Enthusiasm, Audacity, Depth. (Note: Discover your own Voice Values when you subscribe to The Voice Bureau’s Insider Stuff e-letter. Look for the sign-up box in the upper righthand corner of the site.)

An unlikely source of creative inspiration for me is:

I find inspiration when I’m going somewhere. I love airplanes especially, but trains, boats, ferries, road trips, even the subway get the wheels turning — both figuratively and literally!

If I could invite 3 people to dinner to give me their take on my work in the world, I’d invite:

1. Ellen DeGeneres because she’s hilarious and quick on her feet.

2. Roger Deakins because he is a brilliant Director of Photography and has a sardonic British sense of humor. (I learned tons from working with him on Revolutionary Road.)

3. Steven Spielberg because when it comes to telling stories with a camera, few can do it better than him.

My brand is all about:

Freedom. Expression. Creativity.

I do the work I do because:

Creating videos and offering consulting services is the ideal convergence between what I enjoy artistically and how I can be of service to people who want to share their stories on camera but feel stuck or overwhelmed about the process.

The best compliment I’ve ever received from a client is:

On a recent shoot, a client turned to me and said, “You get it. You really understand what’s it’s like to be on both sides of the camera. I trust you and that’s given me an outlet to share my work in way I only dreamed could be possible.”

Yep, warm fuzzies over here.

If I couldn’t do the work I’m doing now, I’d be a:

CIA Agent. Alias-style. [Abby’s note: Me, too!]

I knew I’d arrived in the middle of my entrepreneurial ‘sweet spot’ when I:

Received requests for more classes and services! I’m trying to keep up!

The next big business challenge for me is:

I’d like to figure out how to not work myself into the ground seven days a week.

I can never get enough:

Tweets from Maria Popova (@brainpicker). I don’t know where she finds all the gems she shares, but they are guaranteed to be fascinating.

My lifestyle, in 3 words:

Frenetic, Flexible, Flowing

What I really wish you could see about yourself is:

Your story is enough. Smoke and mirrors along with bells and whistles aren’t necessary.

In the comments, we’d love to know:

Why haven’t you already added video to your brand conversation? What’s been holding you back? (Or — if you have video in your mix, what have been your biggest challenges about getting videos planned, made, posted, or shared?) Monica and I are listening in the comments and we’d love to hear from you.

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This is a Reader Edition of The Voice Bureau Asks, in which we hand our readers the mic. We want to hear your 100-word take on 1 provocative brand challenge. Today’s question is . . .

Why do you want a tribe?

Tribes. As business owners and brand creators, we’re “supposed to” have them.

We’re supposed to nurture them, inspire them, empower them. We’re supposed to email them regularly.

We’re supposed to know what to do with them. (This last part has confounded many a smart and enterprising brand creator, so if this part is confusing for you, you’re not alone.)

Most of knowing what to do with your tribe comes with understanding why you even want one — and that’s exactly what we’d like to talk with you about today.

We’re asking this question because in our recent Reader Survey (which is still open for contributions, by the way), contributors have said that one of their Top 3 goals for 2013 is to grow their community, readership, or tribe.

So we want to know — why?

What do you think you’ll get by growing your tribe?

What are you hoping for?

What’s the result you’re aiming for?

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

Why do you want a tribe? Lay it out for us and we’ll talk back.

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