[Transcript starts at 1:28]
Hello, hello, hello, my podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. Hit my chest kind of hard there. Hit my chest kind of hard there. Not gonna lie. Maybe you heard it if you're listening to it. Definitely saw it if you're watching on YouTube, but welcome back to the podcast.
Today, we were talking about not falling into the branding trap. If you're listening to this when the episode drops it is Monday, August 7th. Happy August to you. I got no reviews to read this episode. I told you that probably wouldn't, but also I batched the episode so they can only come in so fast, but I got no reviews to read this episode, but we do have more stars.
We're at 242 and y'all are the fucking best. So thank you for that. Again, unidirectional platform here. I love hearing from you. So thank you for any of you that have taken the time to leave a review, to leave some of the rating, leave a rating, leave the stars, if you want to do that, I would love it. Head on over to Apple podcasts.
Search Maestro on the Mic, scroll down, you'll see a little thing with stars, leave some stars, preferably five, really, come on now guys, preferably five, or leave a little review, right. It takes about one week for, between the time that you leave one and the time that I see it, so, yeah.
But the episode, let's hop on in, we are talking about preventing the fall into the brand trap.
What is the branding trap? Excuse me, not the brand trap, the branding trap. What is the branding trap? That is when you think that spending eleventy billion dollars on graphic, on a graphic designer will help you magically succeed, right? It is thinking, or it is spending eleventy billion dollars on a graphic designer because you think visuals are what make a successful brand or business.
They are helpful. They are a part. But there's other things that are far more important.
So what I want to start off this episode with is a few definitions, right? I hear people kind of use these things interchangeably and I think that if we kind of get specific with it, it could be helpful in understanding what it would be most prudent and most beneficial to work on as we look to build an online business, establish an online brand, build or attract an online audience.
So, Brand, what is that? That is an, an entity with a distinct identity. You, as a human being, are a brand, whether you want it or not. You are, you are an entity with a distinct identity. Branding as a verb is using the brand's visual elements. Branding as a noun. refers to the brand's visual elements, right?
So when I say always be branding, I mean, always be using your brand's visual elements. Put your logo on everything. If you're watching this on YouTube, you see it. I got the logo on my shirt. I got the logo behind me over there. Cool little, uh, is that an LED? I don't even know. I think it's an LED. It's not a neon light.
It is neon, but. I got a light behind me, that's an M, Maestro M. If you look real far in the background, you see a little M that's on the trademark, um, I don't know what they're called, trademark papers I have behind me, it's everywhere. Always be branding, always be using your brand's visual elements.
As it relates to look at that branding. I really like that branding. That typically refers to people when people are saying, I like that branding, they're referring to the brand's visual elements. I really like the way that that looks, right? That's what they're saying.
Brand identity. This is what most people are speaking about when they say branding. This is what most people are thinking about when they, when they say that they want to work on their branding. It's the visual and vocal elements that represent a brand. It's the name. It's the logo. It's the font. It's the typography. Not topography, typography. It's the voice. This honestly, folks is far less important- or that, folks, is honestly far less important than this next piece, which is brand personality. Brand personality speaks to the emotional, psychological, and behavior patterns of the brand. It is a direct, that's a weird way to say it. It is a direct representation of the values of the brand and what the brand stands for.
Brand personality is ultimately what determines the success of your business. Brand personality, it's you, if you are the brand. This is what creates relatability. It creates trust. It creates likability and ultimately creates the business success.
So this episode is most specifically inspired by a recent Maestro Meeting that I had, and if you didn't know, I do branding audits and branding sessions, branding consults, I'm having a tough time with emphasis on syllables this episode.
I do branding sessions, let's just say that, during Maestro Meetings. I am working on teasing this out as a formal separate offerings, but it's all the same, it would still be the same price, it's the same length. I just call them all Maestro Meeting. But when that person comes in and wants to work on branding, we work on the following. One, I'm going to help this person identify what actually makes them special and then succinctly communicate why consumers and customers should choose them over competitors. My brain works in terms of the bio and that's largely what that's going to be, meaning your Instagram bio.
Then from a tactical perspective, we work on identifying your true voice. I look at what you've been doing and based on the conversation, I have a pretty extensive and by pretty, I mean, very extensive intake form. Look at identifying your true voice. We look to define your audience, look to establish your, again, your UVP, your unique value proposition.
What sets you apart from your competition? From there, we create a solid brand strategy and ultimately that looks and that will amplify your brand presence. I do this during an hour long call. It is a Maestro meeting. They are 397 for now. May raise the price? I don't know. I'm not trying to create scarcity, just saying the truth.
Um, if you're interested in that, we'll put a link in the show notes, you can check that out. I don't do, um, what is it called? I don't do discovery calls anymore, because I don't. I have a whole episode on why I stopped offering them, so Courtney, if you could link that, thank you. But I do have an intake form, excuse me, a inquiry form, and so if you're like, hey, but I have some questions about it, cool, submit the inquiry and then we can go from there, but I'm still very likely going to say yes, I can help you, and it's going to be through a Maestro Meeting.
But in this Maestro meeting that I had with this person, the question was asked, “How should I spend my time? How should I spend my money?” He's looking to establish, build, start an online business. He wants to establish an online presence and the very simple answer is spend your time developing your brand personality and then down the road, you can get help and pay to create that brand identity. Remember brand identity speaks to the visual and vocal elements. Largely the visual element elements, the name, the logo, the font, things like that. People tend to think they want to have that first. No, that's backward. Brand personality comes first.
Who are you? What do you want to say? What have you been saying? What do you stand for? You establish that first and then you get help with pictorially representing that.
So the action item, if you are sitting here and you're like, yeah, I'm trying to grow this brand. I'm trying to build this brand. The action item for you is just create content.
It's always to create content. If you're looking to take that organic approach where you want to put stuff out there, you want to put your thoughts, your beliefs, your, your knowledge out there, and you want to attract an audience, you wanna building audience, so you can teach them more, you can work with them, you can sell them things that starts with creating content, go get prolific with your content creation.
From there, you find your voice, you attract your people, you establish your message, and then you look to have your visuals reflect those values, right? But the developing of the brand personality comes first and it is the most important part of your business. And it is the number one thing that will determine the success of your business.
From a tactical perspective, because if you're like, well, I need like something, if I'm just starting, I need some colors. Yes, I agree. So as it relates to initial brand identity, here's what I would recommend. Go to canva. com, go to coolers. co, it's c o o l o r s dot co. And you can pick a color palette from there.
Start off with just the fucking color of your favorite color. Start off with that. I actually brought in Kristen Mann, she's someone I'm going to drop her name in a few minutes when I give you some recommendations. Um, brought her into the Mafia to talk about, she's also in the Mafia, but I brought her on to talk about branding and graphic design.
And she was like, use the color that you like the most because you're gonna keep using it. And I was like, I love that. Start off with that color palette, keep it simple. For your logo. Draw something out yourself. You don't need a logo to start off with, but just draw something simple. Just have something there so you get started. Use your name, use your name for your website, use your name for your Instagram handle. That's fine. Make a very simple website. Use Squarespace. You know, I always recommend Lex Lancaster and Squarespace for all things Squarespace. So that was a little redundant there, but we'll drop her in the, in the show notes.
You can get it, buy one of their templates. So I, I did my first website using Squarespace. That's all you need. And then focus on creating content, and if you have current people, serving them. All right. Look to establish, develop, identify that brand personality first. Yes, it's helpful, it can feel fun to have that brand identity, the colors and things like that.
But they matter far less. Think about Nike. Nike symbol is pretty stupid to me. That little fucking swoosh sign looks like a lazy check mark. But it has power behind it because of the personality of the brand and what we believe the brand stands for. Not because of the logo itself, right? You as the brand bring value to the logo, not the other way around.
Um. So again, pick your favorite color, use your name, choose a single template from Canva so that you can create content on social media, and then tie your page together via that single font, that color scheme, what your niche is, and showing up authentically, AKA using your voice.
I dropped a question on Threads today and I, cause I'm batching podcast episodes and I was like, Hey, what do you folks want to hear about?
I'd love to hear from you over on Threads and see what you folks have to say. And my girl Joy was like, “Hey, I would love a podcast episode on branding.” And I was like. You're in luck. I already outlined one. But she asked some questions that I didn't put in here. So I'm going to add this part here and she said, “How do you know if you're doing it wrong or if you're doing it right?”
And I think that, you know, if we're going to soften the doing it wrong, you've just identified what you need to work on as opposed to saying you're doing it wrong. But if we're going to just bluntly state, are you, if you're doing it wrong, are you doing branding wrong? It's when you're not doing these things that I just said, right?
This is the person that is using loads of different fonts. Please, for the love of fucking God, stop using cursive. Stop using cursive. No one can read it. It's not good. Stop using it. Graphic designers everywhere will agree. People have a zillion different colors. They're always changing it up. They're trying to be someone else, right?
They're not being authentic themselves, and they don't have a niche. They're just talking about all the things. That is not very cohesive branding. The flip side, you have a single font, you have a cohesive color scheme that you can get from Canva, you can get from Coolers. co. My initial color scheme was actually like a kind of purplish baby blue ish color, gray and black.
And then, I used that for a bit and I had a different logo and I was like, I actually want this to be punchier. All right. I used it for a bit. I was like, Hey, I know what I'm trying to say. I know how I want to come across and this isn't actually reflecting that. And so I switched and I wanted more angles.
I wanted harder, harsher lines. I wanted a brighter color, which I picked after getting the Jeep. I got the Jeep first and I was like, Oh, maybe I will use this, right? It wasn't that I, you know, had some, some thought of like green means money, and so I'm going to use that. It was literally, I went and got a Jeep and I went into the Jeep dealership with no colors in mind.
That Jeep, Peggy, was on the showroom floor and I drove it home. I test drove a different Jeep, different Jeep. When I went there, I was like, I just don't want to test drive a brown one. And I ended up test driving a tan one. And I was like, actually this is pretty cool. And then when I got inside and they were trying to sell me it, I was like, okay, but how much for that one over there, pointing at the, the green Jeep, the hyper green Jeep also known or now known as Peggy.
And they're like, it's the same price. And I was like, what? I didn't realize this because it had big wheels on it. It had like a tanga top on it. And they were like, yeah, we just have to switch the things out, but it's the exact same vehicle. And I was like, What? And that is how I got that, what we now call Maestro green.
It wasn't that I went in and did some fucking color psychology or anything like that. It was that I drove home a Jeep that I liked and then when I needed a new website because my business was growing, I pulled that color. Simple as that. So tying into that, my story of, of brand personality and brand identity, when it came to brand identity and the colors and logos and things like that, I did the website myself.
I use Squarespace. Um, I created my initial logo with the help of my boy, Anthony Mucurio. And then the second logo I drew out while I was sitting at the Rock Tape Instructor Summit, the first one, and I had my girl Caroline, um, she works with, in the, uh, WordPress space, um, she had her graphic designer turn it into a vector, um, my podcast logo, my initial podcast logo, and the ones that you see kind of on, on certain things, I had my guy Jimmy McKay, his podcast guy drew that up for me. Um, the new podcast cover art that I, that I had- that was my initial podcast cover art as well.
When I updated it, the one that you see now, the one that most of you probably know, I made that together with Lex. I had an idea, I saw some other podcast work, and I was like, I like that. And we made it on Canva. My new website, I hired a guy named Joe Bergantine, he's a friend of, a friend and a referral from my girl Milica.
Um and I paid a lot of money for that. The evolution of things came because I lean into brand personality and just showing up and establishing what I want to say, how I want to say it and just really leaning into who I am in the online space and who I am in general, but also showing that in the online space.
The logos that I do now for my swag, you know that I do that with my sister. She's Cecilia. She's Silver- @Silvershieldmaiden on Instagram. I'm going to give you a recommendations in a minute or so. But yes, I do think that I have an eye for some of these things and I enjoy doing it so I'm not saying that everyone has to go about it this way and maybe you hire out sooner than I did, but I will say that it's been easier to quote unquote Maestrofy my stuff and have people who I work with provide me with something that I will like because I have such a strong brand personality, right?
People know what I stand for. They know what I'm about. They know how I show up. And then the professionals can say, okay, well, pictorially, that's what this looks like, right? But the brand personality comes first. So to me, it's just important that you take action and not spend eleventy billion dollars right off the bat.
So this is my way of saying, do the thing. Keep it simple from the beginning. I go to coolers. co, go to Canva, get a color scheme from there, pick a simple font. Use your name, build a simple website on Squarespace, and just get started with that. Yes, brand identity matters, and it's really fun, but it does not matter nearly as much as brand personality, okay?
Of note, if you're like, I'm kind of past that, and I've already established my brand personality, and I've already established my brand identity, but I want to change it. I want to do a rebrand. A rebrand should be done via simplifying. All right, a rebrand should be done via simplifying. It shouldn't be like this whole fucking new thing with all these like crazy characters and things like that.
It should simplify what you currently have. So if you were looking for some recommendations for people to work with as relates to graphic design, three of them coming at you. And I will say, pay the people what they ask. The price is the price, but always wait until you're ready until you actually need these things.
So anything logo related, I go with my girl, my sister, Cecilia. She is @SilverShieldMaiden on Instagram. Uh, two graphic designers that do a bit more comprehensive things, kind of website work, Canva work, um, templates and things like that. That's going to be Kristen Mann. She's @KristenMannDesign on Instagram.
There's two N's. We'll link it in the show notes. And then Cams, my other girl. She's cams. nutritiondesignlab on Instagram. And I want to check this real quick because I feel like I said something wrong here. We're not going to cut this out. We're going to just keep it live, keep it running. And I just want to make sure that it is, yes, it is Kristen Mann Design.
That's correct. Two Ns. All right. So if you're looking for recommendations, those are my people.
Bringing it back, summarizing the episode. Yes, visuals are helpful. Yes, they absolutely can and do tell a story. But they are only truly, truly helpful once you know what story you want to tell. All right. So brand personality first.
Last part, what if you're showing up currently and you're working on all of this and you're like, I don't need someone. I just want to know if I'm doing well. A few things, I wanna know if I'm doing a good job. Number one, you will know how you're doing by what people say. Wow. You will know how you're doing by what people say.
All right. Tactically, just do the things I said earlier. Making sure you're tying your page together, tying all of your brands together, tying your platforms together via same font, same color scheme, same niche, same voice, aka it's you. The same on all platforms. Very simple. In terms of the feedback you get from people, this is more about when people say, this is so you, or I thought about this, or I saw this and thought of you and they send it to you.
Do you agree? Is it you? Nice question to ask your audience. “If I had a hotel, what would it look like?” That is my favorite question to ask as it relates to branding and see how well you're doing. Cause it speaks to not just your aesthetic, the brand identity, but your personality. And you can also see kind of your values coming through and how you show up.
Cause some people may say the wait, the staff would be so friendly. Something like that. Right? So ask your audience, if I had a hotel, what would it look like? Yes, this requires that you be in a phase where people are engaging with you, but, that was kind of the beginning of the question of, you know, you're already showing up and then working with people.
So, if I was going to bring this into four parts of… the main theme here, for knowing if you're doing it well, as we should say, is congruence amongst four parts. And those four parts are who you are as a person, is the same as how you want people to see you. Maybe some therapy required there. Which is the same as how you are showing up.
That's where brand identity starts to come in as well, which is the same as how people see you. So who you are, is the same as how you want people to see you, is the same as how you're showing up, is the same as how people are actually seeing you. Congruency across the board. So if you're just starting out, your focus should be simply on developing, establish, and leaning into brand personality.
First, identify your values and then worry about nailing the visuals. All right. one announcement and then I'll leave you alone.
The waitlist is open for round 14 of my Instagram intensive, which is a six week online group coaching program that focuses on teaching health and fitness pros exactly how to use Instagram for online business.
We will start September 4th. The waitlist gets 100 monies off and they get early access to registration. We cap it at 40 to make sure that there is quality. So there will be a link as always in the show notes. Would love to have you if you are. Interested. All right, officially wrapping it up. Until next time friends, Maestro out.
Watch this episode on YouTube!
Get on the Waitlist for the Instagram Intensive!
Get in a Maestro Meeting with me
Connect with Lex for everything SquareSpace
My design recommendations:
My sister, Cecelia: @silvershieldmaiden
Kristen Mann: @kristenmanndesign
Cams: @cams.nutritiondesignlab
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