Mini Series: Practice to Professional (1 of 7): You are your brand.
Vol. 057
You are your brand.
How being your authentic self builds trust and puts more money in your pocket.
A quick bite:
An introduction to my first ever mini-series! Over the next 7 weeks I’ll be breaking down my primary keynote talk: Practice to Professional: manifesting your ideal creative career. I’ll be spending 1 week on each of the 6 primary points in my talk, and on the 7th week I’ll be hosting a live webinar where I give the presentation and take a live Q&A, which you can view anytime.
Continue reading below…
A 7-week series dissecting the 6 main points of my keynote speech: Practice to professional: manifesting your ideal creative career. This mini series culminates with a live webinar and Q&A where I talk through actual examples of how I applied these 6 main points to grow a 6-figure + creative business. You can rewatch the webinar through the link in week 7 below.
This talk highlights how intentional decision making and a focus on human connection and creating self-fulfilling work can set up your creative practice for long term success, sustainability, and wealth.
Week 1: You are your brand
Week 2: Free and underpaid work can be okay*
Week 3: Never Stop Experimenting
Week 4: Lie More
Week 5: Your Network is your net-worth
Week 6: Chasing the fog
Week 7: Watch the Webinar and Q&A!
Let’s first answer the question: what is a brand?
A brand isn’t your logo. A brand isn’t your website. A brand isn’t your instagram, your retail location or your newsletter.
Your brand is how others experience or perceive your products and/or services. Your brand isn’t what you say it is — your brand is what others say it is.
So, how do you control this? How do you brand yourself as an artist? How do you brand yourself as a graphic designer — how do you brand yourself to attract your ideal clients and do the work you want to be doing?
Think of your company or your business as a person. The personality of that person should come across in everything that you say and do. That personality should come through in what you say, how you say it, how you look, how you present yourself, your products and services—everything.
In acknowledging this, I believe the best thing I ever did for myself, my business, and my brand was truly being myself. That’s it! Be the authentic, true you.
Authenticity is key. Companies and individuals alike find deep comfort in feeling like they know who they’re working with before they work with them. You’re able to make that human connection through consistent authenticity.
With particular regard to branding yourself on social media, I would argue that the more your personality comes through, the better. Quit trying to water everything down to appease the masses—stand for something, and let that “something” transcend everything that you say and do.
It is worth noting that as you become more steadfast and vocal in your brand, you will tend to become a bit more polarizing; however, more often than not, this is beneficial for your brand and for the clients you'll attract. A brand that stands for something is a brand that feels real. This realness will resonate with others, and will make them stronger advocates for your brand and thus better, longer-term or higher paying customers. Similar to the idea of niching down in your work, there's significant value in first clarifying how you present yourself and then doing so with conviction.
Through being as outgoing, weird, and personable as possible, I’ve seen small opportunities grow into larger and larger opportunities. Being my true, honest, vulnerable self brings down the guard of others. This is part of my brand! Intentionally being open and honest enables me to better empathize with my clients, and this leads to building trust with my clients. This trust ultimately leads to being able to more confidently charge for my work and make the money that I deserve!
Building your brand around authenticity
From the perspective of a client, customer or potential employer, your authenticity is interpreted as confidence, professionalism, and experience. This establishes trust and further positions you as an expert. If your client trusts you, they will be far less likely to question your rates, process or work, and THAT is what ultimately enables you to charge the higher rates that you deserve.
The above segues us nicely into next week's topic: Free or underpaid work CAN be okay*
*when done intentionally
That’s right — I’m here to take the opposite side of the touchy argument that you should never do free work. I’m here to tell you that doing free or underpaid/low budget work (in the right circumstances) has catapulted me forward and enabled me to work with some of my biggest brands, highest paying clients, and build some of the longest lasting relationships.
Tune in next week for more of this 7 part series!
Week 1: You are your brand
(Next week!) Week 2: Free work can be okay**
Week 3: Never Stop Experimenting
Week 4: Lie More
Week 5: Your Network is your net-worth
Week 6: Chasing the fog
Week 7: Live Webinar, Q&A
As a last thought: If you’re feeling hung on the thought that “you don’t know what your brand is or how to position or present your brand”, my suggestion is to just get started. Start writing, start posting on social media, start talking about your process: just simply start doing. You can’t figure something out if you haven’t started anything at all. Don’t obsess over doing things perfect — simply just start doing, and then reconfigure as you go. It’ll get easier as you go, trust me.
