Latest / The Brand Bitch™ Podcast / EP 02 | The Women Who Got Me Here + the Woman I Had to Become
Transcript
- Cat Fisfis: Welcome to the Brand Bitch Podcast. I'm your host, Catherine Visfis, brand strategist, creative director, and founder and creator of the Brand Bitch. After spending the last 15 years scaling businesses, investing over six figures, and starting over more than once, I finally realized something. Businesses don't become unforgettable because of better marketing. They become unforgettable because their founders become recognizable. Every week we'll challenge conventional business advice and explore what it really takes to build a recognizable brand. And a business that is unmistakably yours. So if you're ready to stop chasting visibility and start becoming the obvious choice, you're in exactly the right place, my friend. The world doesn't need another founder trying to fit in. It needs more founders brave enough to become unforgettable. So let's build a brand they'll remember, shall we? We love to talk about becoming her. We hear become her everywhere in entrepreneurship. And I'm not necessarily against it. I actually believe deeply in identity work. But I think we've accidentally turned becoming her into this idea that the woman we are right now somehow isn't enough for where we're going. Like there's this entirely different, more successful version of us waiting on the other side. And we just have to figure out how to turn ourselves into her. The questions we are constantly asking ourselves: Who do I need to become to make $10,000 a month? Who do I need to become to lead a team? Who do I need to become to have the audience that I want? do I need to become to be recognizable? Who do I need to become to hold more money? More visibility? More responsibility. More influence, a bigger business. How about a bigger life? These aren't bad questions. In fact, I think entrepreneurship requires us to expand our identity over and over again. The problem comes when we interpret expansion as a replacement. Your next identity isn't a replacement, it's expansion. You see, you don't have to erase the woman who got you here. You don't need to become less emotional, less weird, less funny, less you to be more successful. I've learned that over the years for sure. You don't suddenly need to become CEO like. You don't need to manufacture some polished version of yourself because you think that's what a woman running a seven figure company looks like. You're not auditioning for the role of a successful business owner. You're expanding your capacity to hold more while becoming even more of yourself. Last episode, I walked you through my 15-year entrepreneurial journey. And when I look back at all those versions of myself now, I can see something that I couldn't necessarily see when I was living them. There was Fashion Cat. She taught me taste, taught me presentation. She taught me how much perception matters. She taught me that what something feels like can be just as important as what it is. That's still all over my work today. Then there's handbag designer, handbag business cat. She taught me how to create something from a little tiny idea. I wasn't sitting in some fashion capital surrounded by connections at that point, guys. I had an idea, I decided to figure it out. That cat, she taught me resourcefulness. She also taught me what it means to build something around the life I actually wanted. Network marketing cat. This one is important because sometimes we want to distance ourselves from chapters that we've outgrown. Well, that decade wasn't wasted. That cat, she learned community, relationship building. She learned that selling was not the same for everybody. Sales is a very different business. She learned consistency. She learned how to show up before she necessarily felt ready. She learned how powerful belonging can be in business. Then we have brand designer cat. She thought she was designing brands. Silly her. But looking back, she was learning to see people. She learned how to pull someone's ideas, personality, vision, and value out of their head and turn them into something other people could actually understand. She learned that branding was never really about making things pretty from the outside. High frequency studio cat. She started stepping out of designer mode and into creative director. She learned to trust her perspective. That clients didn't just need her hands, they needed her brain. She started developing the beliefs and the frameworks that eventually became something much bigger. And then the brand bitch. Every single one of those women built her. And all of them together gave her point of view. See, none of that was wasted. Even the things I wouldn't do again. Even the businesses I wouldn't necessarily build again. Even the strategies I don't believe in anymore. The investments that didn't give me what I thought they would, even the versions of myself that make me cringe just a little bit right now. They all gave me something. And I think we need to stop being so quick to disown the woman we've outgrown. Because she was there for a reason. She wasn't behind. She wasn't doing it wrong because you know. More now, she was building the evidence, the experience, and the capacity that you get to stand on today. And here's something I've realized. Those versions of me weren't evolving in a vacuum. There were women all the way around who showed me something, who opened a door, who believed in me, who challenged me, who showed me a possibility that I hadn't yet considered for myself. I posted something this week about the women who got me here, and I couldn't stop thinking about it after I did so. But none of these versions existed in isolation. There were women around me at different points who shaped what I believed was possible. Some were physically in my life, some I hired or invested in, some were peers, some were women I watched from afar, some probably had no idea they were influencing me at all. And some were shaping me long before I ever had a business. she showed me that ambition didn't have to be apologized for. She showed me resilience, that a hard season didn't have to become the end of my story. She showed me what leadership could look like without becoming someone I wasn't. She showed me the power of community. She changed the way I thought about money. She normalized a level of success I hadn't personally experienced yet. She made me think bigger. She showed me that motherhood and ambition didn't have to compete with each other. They could coexist. Beautifully, actually. She showed me that your business really could support your life instead of consuming it. She believed in something in me way before I had enough evidence to fully believe in it myself. I think this is a really good spot to touch on why the right room changes everything. Not because somebody in the room gives you a secret strategy, but because the most powerful thing proximity does is normalize what's possible. You hear another woman casually talking about something you've put on a pedestal, the revenue, the team, the launch, the podcast. The speaking opportunity, the business model, the life. And suddenly you're thinking, wait a minute, why not me? That's identity expansion. I can talk about coaches and masterminds and mentors and women I've met in business, but when I really started thinking about this, I realized the women who shaped me started long before entrepreneurship. It was my mom, my grandmothers, my sister, my cousins, my aunts, family friends. I was taught work ethic by my dad. Resilience just from growing up. Moving 13 times in 19 years. That'll teach a kid to be resilient, AF. Going after what I want and let nothing stand in my way. Yeah. That girl shows up in how I'm building my business today. I recognize so much of myself now that came from her. Then you've got the side that I married into. I can't scream more amazing things about my husband and what he's taught me about business and the level of support that I only dream other women get from their spouses. You see, some women teach you business. Some women teach you what's possible. Some women teach you who you are before you even realize they're doing it. I think we need all of those things, honestly. There's another side of this conversation that I think we need to talk about too. Because being influenced by powerful women can be incredible. Until inspiration quietly comes imitation. There's a big difference between borrowing someone's belief in what's possible and borrowing their identity because you think that's who you need to become to have it. This is where entrepreneurship can get a little messy. Because we're constantly consuming other people's businesses. How did you launch? What are you selling? What are you posting? Ooh, what's your morning routine? I need her content pillars. Well, why did she change her pricing? I need to change mine now. Her masterminds, her brand, her team structure, her schedule. my God, the freaking Stanley Cups. Guys, none of that is inherently bad. Until you stop checking whether any of it actually belongs to you. This is exactly why I say stop branding for her and start branding for you. My entire network marketing career, which if you remember, spann a decade, we were always taught to market to our ICA, ideal client avatar. If I heard that one more time, I could scream. But again, marketing to your ICA, branding to her? What happened to you? There's none of you in there. Eventually you can consume so much of other women's businesses that you lose your own instincts. You stop asking, what do I believe? And you start asking, what does she believe? Instead of how do I want to sell? It's well. How does she sell? She's getting all the clients. Maybe I should do that. You stop asking what kind of business supports my life? And start building the business somebody else told you was successful, that women are supposed to want. And eventually everybody sounds the same. Same offers, same hooks, same launch strategies, same beige freaking camera graphics. And then you wonder why nobody remembers who you are. Recognition requires self-trust. You cannot become recognizable while constantly outsourcing your identity. Because the more you look outside yourself for who you're supposed to become, the further away you can actually get from the thing that makes you recognizable. Guys, mentorship isn't the problem. I need you to make this distinction because it's really important. You hire mentors, you look up to mentors, you invest in rooms. You learn from women who are ahead of you. You surround yourself with women who challenge your current thinking. Let someone else's success expand what you believe is possible. But the goal isn't to become your mentor. The goal isn't to become the wealthiest woman in your mastermind. Show everybody up with how many sales you made. It isn't to copy the woman whose business you admire. The goal is to see what's possible and then decide what your version of that looks like. Take the permission, take the possibility, take the lesson, but leave the identity with her because she already exists. We need you. At some point in business, strategy stops becoming the bottleneck. That's hard for us to accept because strategy is easy to buy. You can buy another course, hire another coach, join another mastermind, rebuild your funnel again, change your offer, change your colors, hire somebody. Rebrand. Download another freaking PDF. Sometimes those things are actually necessary. But sometimes you already know enough. That's uncomfortable. Because if you know you don't need another strategy, then you have to look back in yourself to figure out what the issue is. I talked about in episode one about investing more than $150,000 over the years. And so much of that came from genuinely wanting to learn and grow. But there was also a season where the underlying belief was someone else knows the secret sauce that I don't know yet. There's got to be another answer, another framework, another strategy, Another person to tell me what I'm missing. Then the question changed. Instead of what else do I need to learn? How do I find that secret sauce? It became who do I need to become to hold what I say I want. That changed everything. Because maybe you don't need another strategy to get to a 10K month. Maybe you need to become the woman who can receive a 10K month without immediately believing it was a fluke. Maybe you don't need another leadership book. Okay, I know. My husband's listening and as we speak, he's probably pulling my next book out of the Amazon cart. But let's be real. Maybe you need to just trust yourself enough to actually lead. Maybe don't need more visibility tactics. Maybe you need enough conviction in what you believe to repeat it until people actually associate it with you. Maybe instead of another offer, you need to stand behind the one you already built. Identity has to catch up to desire. You can want more money, more influence, more recognition, a team, bigger opportunities, a different lifestyle. But eventually you have to believe I am a woman who can hold this. Not someday, today, right now. No one needs to validate you to believe that. It's not going to be when the stripe notification comes through or when you hit 10K followers. It's before the evidence. Sometimes another woman's belief in herself gives us permission to believe something about ourselves before we have proof. She doesn't give us the identity. She shows us that identity can expand. I think sometimes we imagine this next level version of ourselves waking up one morning as CEO Barbie. If only, right? She's up at 5 a.m., she drinks green juice, journals for 47 minutes to be exact, has perfect boundaries, never cries, doesn't doubt herself. She knows exactly what to do at all times. She wears a blazer to zoom. She has 14 employees, and apparently she loves spreadsheets. Not gonna I love spreadsheets too. However, that woman sounds freaking exhausting. You see, you don't have to become more polished or disciplined or perfect or palatable or serious to become more successful. You might be more discerning, more confident, more willing to say no, more capable of holding responsibility. More comfortable with money, more convicted in your ideas, and willing to be seen. But those things should reveal more of you, not bury you. This is especially important with branding because the more recognizable your business becomes, the more you it should become, not less. Your point of view gets clearer, your language more distinct. Your preferences become more obvious. Your values, yeah, they're harder to miss. Your personality gets more permission. Your decisions more self-led. Your evolution should amplify your identity, not erase it. So let's go full circle. Fashion cat, she's still here. Mom cat, yeah. Designer cat, still here. Network marketing cat, yep. Creative director cat, yeah, she's here. The daughter shaped by the woman who came before her is still here. They're not running the business anymore. But they are a part of the woman who is. Maybe becoming her isn't actually about becoming someone new at all. Maybe it's about giving yourself permission to become more of the woman who's been there all along. I want to leave you with something a little different today. Rather than giving you three more things to do, because nobody has time for that. I want you to think about three things. Number one. Who are the women who helped shape the woman you are today? Not just business mentors, go farther back. Who believed in you? Who challenged you? Who expanded you? Who made something feel possible that you couldn't have even imagined before that? Number two. What did each of these women show you was possible? Not what can you copy from her? woot caption or hook. But what did seeing her unlock in yourself? And what part of your business are you being asked to expand rather than replace in this next season? Maybe you're not missing something. Maybe you don't need to become someone else. Maybe the next level requires you to trust something that's already there. Because becoming recognizable isn't about creating a more marketable version of yourself. It's about becoming so deeply rooted in who you are that people can feel it in everything you create. You cannot become recognizable while constantly outsourcing your identity. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today, guys, and letting me be just a small part of your journey. If today's conversation made you think differently, dream a little bigger, or reminded you of who you're becoming, I'd be so grateful if you'd leave a rating, a review, or share this episode with another entrepreneur. Because every time you do, you're helping another woman realize she's already has what it takes to build a business and a life that's her own. You'll find today's resources, links, and everything we talked about in today's episode in the show notes. And until next time, remember, you don't become recognizable by becoming somebody else. you become recognizable by becoming more of who you've been all along. I'll see you in the next episode. And if no one has reminded you lately, you are enough, you are capable, and yeah, you already have what it takes.