Latest / The Brand Bitch™ Podcast / EP 05 | Your Brand Doesn’t Need More Personality. It Needs a Point of View.
Transcript
- Cat Fisfis: I think we've accidentally convinced business owners that the way to build a personal brand is to just show more personality. Show your coffee, show your kids, tell more stories. Use your favorite phrases. Pick a font that feels like you the most. Talk to the camera more. And listen, I'm obviously not against personality. But personality alone does not make a brand recognizable. Because Can know that you drink iced coffee and you love your dog and you swear a lot, or you wear pink every day, and still have absolutely no freaking clue what you believe about the work you do. That is the difference that I want to talk about today. Because your brand doesn't need more personality, it needs a point of view. Welcome back to the Brand Bitch Podcast. If you've been listening to the last few episodes, we have been talking a lot about recognition. Why more visibility isn't necessarily the answer, why your content probably isn't actually the problem. And today I want to take that conversation one level deeper. Because if I asked you right now, what does your brand believe? Could you answer me? Not what do you sell, not who do you serve, not what is your mission statement, not three words you pick to describe your brand voice. But what do you believe about your industry, your work, your clients, and the transformation that you create? Because that is where your point of view lives. And your point of view is one of the biggest pieces of becoming recognizable. I want to break this episode up into a few different parts. Personality is not positioning. We've confused personal branding with personality. Somewhere along the line, personal branding became just be yourself. And yes, be yourself. But being yourself is not a positioning strategy. Your personality is part of the experience of your brand. Your point of view gives that experience meaning. Think about the brands or the people that you immediately recognize online. You probably don't just recognize their aesthetic. You recognize the way they think. You already know what they're gonna say about certain things. You know what they stand for. You know what they don't agree with. You know what they believe their clients are getting wrong. You know what they believe matters most. That is brand recognition. Personality makes you likable, but point of view makes you memorable. I want you to write this one down. Personality makes you likable. Point of view makes you memorable. Personality might make someone think, ooh, I like her. She's cool. Point of view makes them think, my God, I know exactly who I need to send this to. Completely different level of brand equity. Because now you're not just another person creating good content. You have become associated with an idea. And that is where recognition starts getting really powerful. So what actually is a brand point of view? Your point of view is the way you see a problem. It isn't just having a spicy opinion on Instagram. You don't need to manufacture controversy. You don't need to disagree with everyone. You don't need to have a hot take Tuesday. No. Your point of view is simply the way you see the problem differently because of what you know, what you've experienced, and what you believe. It's your lens. Two brand strategists can look at the exact same business and diagnose two completely different problems. Two coaches can help the exact same type of client and have two completely different philosophies about how that client gets results. Two designers can create completely different solutions because they are starting from different beliefs. That difference, that is where your brand lives. You need to start asking yourself better questions. Instead of asking, what should I post? Start asking, what do I believe? What do I believe my industry gets wrong? What am I tired of watching people teach? don't get me started on that. What does my ideal client think she needs that I know isn't actually the problem? What do I wish more people understood about my work? What am I willing to repeat even when I'm bored of saying it? What would I still believe if Instagram disappeared tomorrow? And how much more time would we have on our hands? Those answers are infinitely more valuable than any other list of 30 content prompts. Because now you have something to build that content from. Let's look at recognition. Comes from association, right? People should begin to associate ideas with you. This connects directly back to what we talked about in episode three. Recognition happens through association. If you haven't listened to episode three, definitely take a step back and listen to that. You're gonna get a lot out of it, I promise. Because someone sees your name and they think of an idea. They hear a phrase and they think of you. They encounter a problem and they remember something you said about that problem. That is what we're trying to create. For example, there are certain things that I say over and over and over again. Yes, I may think I'm A broken record. But I guarantee you, some of you have never heard me say it. Things like brand before content, recognition over visibility, repetition over variety. Business growth is identity growth. And yes, I know you've heard this one. Stop branding for her and start branding for you. I don't need to invent a completely new philosophy every week. Actually, doing that would probably make my brand less recognizable. My job is to keep taking the ideas that I believe deeply and showing them to you from different angles. Different stories, different examples, different conversations, but same core belief. Yeah, you're probably bored before they ever even remember it. This is where so many founders get tripped up. They'll say something three times and think, I've already talked about that. Okay, listen up, girlfriend. Nobody has heard you talk about it. You know that because you're staring at your content for six hours. Your audience has been living their lives for those six hours. They've seen 400,000 pieces of content since yesterday. Recognition requires repetition. So when you find an idea that feels truly and deeply your brand, stop abandoning it because you've already said it. Own that shit harder. That is how ideas become associated with you. I want to talk about how AI makes your point of view more important, not less. We all have access to the same tools now, right? Everyone has some version of AI, whether it's ChatGPT, Claude, Google, such and such, I'm sure there's brand new ones that I've never even heard of. And I think this is where this conversation gets really interesting. Because now that we all have access to, let's just say, Chat GPT. We can all go in there and say, hey, whatever you named your chat, right? Give me 30 Instagram ideas. Write me a caption for this video. Can you create my content calendar? Write this in bold, a conversational voice, but keep it in my tone. And AI can create pretty perfectly decent content. Which means perfectly decent content. is becoming incredibly easy to make. So the competitive advantage isn't I create good content. That's the baseline now, guys. What is the advantage? What are you giving AI to work with? That is your advantage. Do you wanna be good? Or do you wanna be freaking amazing? That leads us into this. AI, while yes, they can do all of what we just talked about, they shouldn't be creating the brain behind your brand. And this is the line that I really want to land for today. AI shouldn't create your brand's brain. It should, however, learn it. Because if you go into Chat GPT with nothing but I'm a business coach for women entrepreneurs and I need to write three Instagram posts this week. What is it supposed to do? It's got to fill in the blanks. Does it know anything about your philosophy? Does it know about what you refuse to say? Does it know your methodology? What about your strongest opinions? Doesn't know the stories that helped shape t the way you work and why. does not know what you want to become known for. So it spits out something that sounds fine. Then we blame AI because everything sounds like AI. But maybe we stop blaming the tool. Cause the tool doesn't have a brain. What if you could give it one now? Your brand should have a brain. Your brand needs an internal operating system. This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Maybe because it's I'm building something pretty freaking epic, if I do say so myself behind the scenes. But it's because I've been digging down deep about all things brand brain. All of our brands should have one. An internal place where everything lives. Your beliefs, your positioning, your offers, your audience, your language, your stories, your opinions, your methodologies, your brand voice. And yeah, your boundaries. What are the things that you say? And the things you wouldn't be caught dead saying. Your proof, your testimonials, any recurring ideas, your visual direction, your whole freaking brand ecosystem. These are the things that should be what your AI is pulling from. How else are you gonna create your content, your emails, your podcast scripts, talking points, offers, launches, your websites? AI shouldn't decide who your brand is every single time you open up a new chat. Just because it can recall the last conversation doesn't mean it has something substantial to pull from. It should already have the context to understand how your brand thinks, how it works. This is the difference between using AI and sounding like AI. Trust me, I was not a fan of AI in the beginning. I wasn't. There's no way. But now that I know how to use it. Big difference. I think this distinction is going to become massive over the next few years. There are going to be brands using AI to make a shit ton of more stuff. And there are going to be brands using AI to amplify an already developed point of view. Those are not the same thing. One creates volume, the other leverage. One is gonna create more content. The other is gonna help express your ideas faster, clearer, and more consistently. I don't know about you, but this is the one that I'm interested in all day long. Okay. I want you to do something for me now. We're gonna do a little brand bitch test. I want you to try this after this episode. I want you to open your notes app or piece of paper, whatever it may be if you're driving. Come back to this part. I want you to answer these five questions. What do I believe about my work that I wish more people understood? What does my ideal client think her problem is? And what do I believe the real problem is? What is something common in my industry that I fundamentally disagree with? yeah, write that down. What are three ideas I could happily talk about for the next three years? I know mine. Could spit them out. Yeah. And if someone conf consumed ten pieces of my content, what would I want them to say that I believe? Don't worry, these are also going to be written in the show notes below. But I want you to look at those five questions and the answers to those five questions because somewhere in there is the beginning of your brand's point of view. You do not need to become louder to be recognizable, my friend. You do not need to manufacture a bigger personality. You definitely do not need to come up with a brand new idea every other day. You do, however, need to know what you believe. You need to decide which ideas you want to own. And then you need the confidence to repeat them long enough that the market. begins to associate those ideas with you. Because your personality can get someone's attention. But your point of view gives them a reason to remember you. And AI makes it easier and easier for everyone and anyone to create more content. Your thinking is a differentiator. Your brand needs a brain. And AI should not be the thing creating it. It should be the thing learning it. Like I said, I've been building something around that exact idea. And I promise you will have that information very, very soon. But until next time, stop branding for her and start branding for you. See you next week. Thank you for hanging out with me today and letting me be 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 founder. Because every time that you do, you're helping another woman realize she already has what it takes to build a business and a life that feels like her. You'll find today's resources, links, and everything we talked about in the episode in the show notes. Until next time, remember, you don't become recognizable by becoming someone 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 you do already have what it takes.