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164: Unleashing Authenticity in Personal Branding with Guest Elayna Snyder · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing Today.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I am super excited that we are here with Alina and we're going to be talking about personal branding.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: If you're looking to articulate the value of your elite coaching fees and evolve your client base into clients that inspire you just as much as you inspire them, this episode is going to give you some really great information.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: She is a personal branding coach who helps you unlock your creativity to powerfully differentiate yourself as the only choice for your future best clients, which I love.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: And, as she puts it, there's nothing more differentiating than being exactly who you are, which I think is just so perfect.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Welcome.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me today.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much, Kendra.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: So let's start off with what is personal branding, just to kick us off, so we're all on the same page.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah Well, I'd like to start off by talking about what it's not Most of my clients.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: When they come to me, I'll tell them the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to stop thinking about personal branding.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: There's something about that construct that hinders us.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: We think maybe it's logo and design, and sure it can be that, but that all stems from this central place, and that central place is you.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: It's the way that you see the world and it's the way that you express the way that you see the world.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: So really gaining awareness and harnessing intention behind that to share your message is what I talk about with my clients.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: It's what I live and breathe.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: And again, I don't live and breathe as a personal branding coach.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: I live and breathe as someone who is intensely creative and curious, and that's really what I help my clients reach into for themselves and put at the forefront to grow their business.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I think that one thing that you said there is curiosity.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: You're very curious.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I find that curiosity really does help people, or working with someone who's curious really helps people understand where they're headed, where they're going, and gives you a different perspective and it challenges you, I think, to see deeper.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Is that what you find?
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, definitely, and if you can hear my dog drinking loudly in the background, welcome everyone.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I definitely find that leading with curiosity is the cornerstone of how we create new opportunities, not just for ourselves, but for our clients.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: We tend to think that we need to know, which is part of why I say forget everything that you know about personal branding, because when we think that we need to know, we limit our ability to really be creative, and so finding those ways to create curiosity and reconnect to that can really help us understand ourselves and the way that we bridge into the reality of our best clients.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit more about the big misconceptions around personal branding, because you've said like let's forget personal branding, because just the term sort of sets people off a little bit.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: They don't necessarily really recognize what it is and what it's about.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: So talk to me a little bit about we know it's more than a logo and colors and a website but talk to me more about what are some of the other misconceptions that you find.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great question and thank you.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Thank you for centering us there, because one of the key misconceptions is the fact that it's called personal, and so when we see personal, we think, oh, I have to talk about me, I have to use that big word, I, I do this, I am this.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: This happened to me the other day and we see that all the time on social media, and that is a huge turn off for so many of us in two ways.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: One is we see somebody else doing that and we don't want to do that.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: And two, it might be somebody who is perfectly positioned well, not perfectly positioned but who can really help us, but we don't see that because they haven't done the work to translate their experience to where we're at.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: And this is this is one of those nitty gritty things that I think a lot of people hold personal branding as far away from themselves as they can because they just don't want to become part of the noise.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: They don't want to be talking about themselves or sell themselves, and that's really not what personal branding is about, and that's not what this conversation is going to be about either.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: So I love that, because people get turned off by the word I.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: It's, I, I, I, I.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I was actually on a phone with a client earlier this week and I said to them they were talking about their sales presentation and their sales stack and I'm like like I don't like.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Their new CEO was like I don't like the order of these slides and I'm like, well, good, you shouldn't, because the slides aren't there for you guys to present.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: The slides are there as a leaf behind.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I'm like, don't be an alligator with a big mouth and little ears.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: You got to be always listening and doing a lot less talking, because people want to know about what's in it for them, and then you want to get that information from them a lot of times, right?
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So how does that work in personal branding If it's not me talking about me all the time?
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the way that I look at it is really a two-phase process.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: First, we do look at you.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: I find that business for myself and my clients is so much of a crash course in personal development of sorts.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: It's really looking at who we are and how we bring ourselves to the world, and there's a lot of work of discovery to do there.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: And the way that I look at it is part of the issue of understanding how to present ourselves to the world is that we're so close to ourselves that we can't see our own perspective.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: And if we go back to my definition of personal branding being your expression of your perspective of how you see the world, we need to understand what your perspective is, because it's that perspective that your best clients need.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: What we do is we look at ways of allowing you to experience your own perspective, and there's lots of different ways to do this really fun, weird, out-of-the-box kind of creative ways to touch into that.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: And once you have that, now we start shifting.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: We start shifting into understanding who your best clients are, which are usually very akin to the person that we're looking back into the mirror with or I could be looking at myself right now as I'm talking right.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: It's like there's so much that is reflected back to us in the way that we see the world, and the more we work towards articulating how we see the world and what our own struggles have been, the better we're going to be able to pull those people into our sphere.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: So now I know I'm a little bit all over the place, but let me bring it together with some more structure, because that's really the next step.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: And when we put structure around our brand, what we're doing is we're giving it language, because if we're just in this space of discovery, both of ourselves and this connection that we have to our best people, that's all beautiful and it's going to help fuel you.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: It already is.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: That's very key.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: It's already working for you.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: But the next step is really to put language around it, and that provides structure that you can go out into the world with for your positioning, say, on a place like LinkedIn, your website.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: It goes into your offers, it goes into your sales process.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: It's this beautiful power of language that you give to your best clients and have them, or catalyze those aha moments where they're leaning in and be like.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: That is exactly how I feel, and I have never heard it put that way.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: That's what we're really looking to create.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: That's so powerful because, yes, you want people to just start to start nodding and be like, yes, that's exactly me and relate to you.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: That's just yeah, I mean.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: And it's the wording and the voice.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: And one thing that you noted is it's on every channel where you're at LinkedIn website offers emails.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: That voice needs to be consistent, because it's who you are.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I was recently talking to someone who had outsourced their website copy and I guess the person that they were outsourcing it to later said sorry, we're not going to do that with you.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And she's like oh my gosh, I've been waiting for them to do this with me.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: And she's like you know what?
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: This was a message.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I needed to be the one writing my website copy because it's about me, and I was looking to them to come up with answers for me as to who I am and where I'm going and what I'm doing, and that's really hard.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: I'm laughing because I'm putting together my website right now.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: I've been in business for almost five years and I don't have one.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: You can find everything that you need to over on LinkedIn, but I'm noticing that I need this space where all of my ideas can live, and I've been in the same spot because I'm talking about all of this.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: I am not free from the struggle.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: This is a really hard thing to do for ourselves, and one of the things that I've really appreciated is working with someone else, and the way that we're working together is I'm writing it and then she comes in and she highlights things that help me see a thread and it helps me see my own language.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: I'm not of my own language, I already know, but we're also putting together stories around what we're doing, and in a different way for a website than, say, content writing, which I write my own content all the time, but there's a lot here, and so if you have a trusted advisor, a coach, if you want to work with somebody else, to have somebody go into the writing that you already have and highlight those snippets and put those in a document.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: So that's a great way to remind yourself of the things that are impactful and the things that you're always saying.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Because here's the thing we kind of get bored with the things that we're already saying and we feel redundant.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: But our best people need us to be redundant, they need to hear those things, they need to be constantly making the loop back for themselves.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: You don't really know where you're catching them right.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I love that example about the website, because, man, I really did want to outsource that, and that's a big question too, of like when can we outsource that kind of stuff?
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Because I know that every time I have to write sales copy especially sales copy I learned something about the product myself, my best clients, and so I'm very hesitant to figure out what that means for me, because this is such a beautiful source of learning and curiosity and creativity.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I just kind of threw some more out there for us to ponder and question and answer for ourselves.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that I really like that you said is that you've been in business for five years and you still don't have a website.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, so the thing that I want to pull out of that for everybody listening or watching is you don't need everything.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I talk about this.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: All the time.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I was like, do not kill yourself to be on 17 different social media channels and have a website and keep it updated with a blog.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: And, yes, you need to be consistent with your communications.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's my belief, but don't sign up for more than you can handle.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: And Not everything everybody says is truth or needed Right.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And it's okay to challenge a little bit of the status quo, which I think is just really cool to note.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: I think that that was just really insightful.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do believe that you can outsource writing.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I do it for a lot of my different clients.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: You can outsource that, but you gotta find someone that really understands who you are and you have to know that going into it so that they can reflect who you are Right.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is very much a partnership and I'm appreciating this partnership that I'm growing right now, and I do it for my clients.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: I do help because I have clients who are just like I do not wanna do this, and it's clear.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: The delegation there is clear, but for some of us, like me, it's not, and so we really need to lean into the questions around what the thing is giving us and perhaps that's okay, or perhaps there are things that once we do offload that, like I could seek that learning elsewhere.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: That's really the question that I'm sitting with for myself right now.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Do I want it to be this kind of learning?
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Or, if I offload it, can I shift over to this learning and this curiosity?
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Which do I need right now?
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And I think that kind of going back to the idea of you don't need to be in every place.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: We need to be constantly tinkering with questions to understand what's in this for us and not in a self aggrandizing way Like what is going to support you with where you're at right now.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Cause I think one of the biggest misconceptions about marketing as a whole is that we assume that marketing means to the masses and it doesn't.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: It can.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Marketing can be one conversation to the next, and really that's how I've built my business.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Most of that was originally on LinkedIn before pre-pandemic, so that's changed.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Right, there's a lot that's changed.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: And that's another thing.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: It's like how are we evolving, how are we changing?
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: How are we keeping these questions with us, tinkering with them so that they serve us, as opposed to just sourcing what worked for somebody else?
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, marketing is not a bad word, sales is not a bad word.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: People ask me all the time I'm like oh, I don't think I could just go into my own business because I don't like to sell.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: I'm like I don't sell, I add value.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: I add a value that they're missing and that they need.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not selling people things that they don't need because, that's not who I am right, so talk to me a little bit about that.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So you're writing copy for sales pages and sales copy that's one of the hardest things to write, oh it is Cause I do a ton of writing.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: And also I wanna be very clear I never thought of myself as a good writer.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: In fact, I grew up like my little sister she's the writer in the family, right and then, when I started coming into business and I started writing my own content, it was a slog.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: It had to be a very loving process of myself to be able to do that.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: And then, as I've started writing sales copy, I'm just like whoa.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: This is a different beast, it's a different potency, and what I believe about all copy is that copy is a form of listening, and this goes back to the personal branding and the misconceptions around that, because this is not central around an I statement.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: This is understanding how your best clients are experiencing their problems, but it's not just necessarily problems Like what is their current experience that you come into and give them a different way of sitting with that, cause that's the first step.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: You're going to connect with them with where they're at in their experience.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: You're going to validate that and then you're going to show them the problem under the problem and that's the first little shift in transformation for them and that's what gets them leaning in closer, understanding that if they feel this way now, what does it mean to work with you?
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: And so, for me, sales copy really is that thread of listening.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: How do I know where my best clients are at?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: How can I source them?
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: All of my sales copy has come from running things for free, talking to current clients, so that I'm starting with their words and my perspective and translating that into the landing page or whatever it may be.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: So one of the most important things I heard there was you're not making up the content for the sales page.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: You are leveraging it from learnings that you got from people who are your target audience, or from your best clients, because, all right, everybody listen to this.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: She talked to them.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: It sounds so simple, but people just don't want to do that and they fight it like it's the worst thing in the world that we could ask them to do.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: It's not painful, no, it's just finding some time in your calendar to invest in yourself, in your business.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: And it's a gift to them.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: It's a gift to both of you, because imagine a conversation where you're letting them look at the journey that you've already been on with them.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: That is so powerful.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: It's not just that everybody likes to hear themselves talk.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: When we get to reflect on a journey, we get to uncover different pieces of insight that are ours, they're coming from our own journey, and that's really powerful.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I also want to add something real quick to the idea of the sales page and what we're using for that, because there's this other piece that gets really left out, and that is your perspective, meaning it is my perspective.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: There are my words for understanding that the best way to be different, the best way to differentiate yourself, is to be you, and I know that that is a very key message of mine, and so I use that.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: But I don't just say that.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: I attach it to what the experience of the best client or my best clients is.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: So it's this constant dance with both your own perspective and the experience of your best clients and playing that back and forth so that there's balance, insight, connection, listening, curiosity and creativity.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: There's just so much there.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: I think that that's very insightful for, again, your perspective, what you're adding to that conversation is really important, because it's more than just about where they're at.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: But you're using their words and adding in your perspective, because that's ultimately what they're buying.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Is you and your perspective Right?
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: So if somebody wanted to get started with personal branding, what do you recommend that they do, or how do you recommend that they get started?
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Great question and I'm going to suggest something that is out of the ordinary.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: To start with, it's kind of my specialty I like to play around with these kinds of things, and what I would suggest is carve out 15 minutes, 30 minutes, put everything down, get up and go for a walk and the only thing that I want you to do is I want you to notice what you notice.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: We could even do that right here.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Notice what you're noticing right now, because there is a clue in that, and the more you can lean into that, the more you can experience how you see the world, because really that's what it is Noticing what we notice, is noticing or is experiencing that perspective that we hold.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: I was going on a walk with my sister and her wife the other day and they were talking about how they have fun going for walks, trying to call out what the other one will notice, and it's just, it's different.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: So look at that.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: And then I want you to know that you are your niche.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: So there's a few questions that you can ask yourself and really dive deep into.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: One is what are your three biggest fears?
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Get crazy with those, like.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Dive deep into what that looks like.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: What are three ways that you tend to hold yourself back.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: And the last question is what are three things that you really value about yourself?
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: And when I talk about these things, you can list them as single words, but I want you to really really explore them, because the more that you can articulate them, the more that you can work with them and understand them, the easier it's going to be for you to connect those with the people who need to hear what you've got to say, and they likely are going to be very similar in their fears.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: What's holding them back?
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: The things that they value.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: So the more work that you can do for yourself around articulating that experience for you, the more relatable you're going to be to them and the better you're going to be able to connect and create those best clients.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Those are really great suggestions.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: So, everybody, when you're done listening, okay, wait until you're done listening or watching, then go for a walk, put everything away and see what you noticed.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: That is just very powerful in terms of what you're going to be able to learn about yourself as you take a look and see what it is that you're noticing and journeying with.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: That is fantastic.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Alina, for your time and the lessons learned.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: I think that this is chock full of information.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: We'll hopefully get you guys started on your personal branding journey Now, before I let you go.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: This show is called Imperfect Marketing because, as most everybody here knows, marketing is anything but a perfect science.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the first.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: I remember this, like it was yesterday, when I was talking to a sales strategist and he talked to me about marketing just simply being connection, and there I was not knowing anything about what I was doing, because that's how I enter most things I don't know what I'm doing.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: I've lived all over the world.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I really feed off of that, and when he said that to me, it changed everything, because I was trying to figure out how, and I was following other people, I was following their systems, I was trying to fit myself into these boxes.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: That just didn't feel right.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: And I think that that's true for so many of us is that when we have that yucky feeling, that is often an indication that we are trying to fit ourselves into a box that is not self-shaped.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: So, yes, that has been one of my biggest learnings in marketing.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: So marketing is definitely all about connection, so make sure that you are connecting and reflecting your personal brand.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: That is a lot more than you may have thought it was.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Thank you all so much for tuning in, no matter where you're watching or listening, I do appreciate it a ton.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: If you got something from this episode and hopefully you did, because I know that I did you can go ahead, and I'd love it if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Until next time, have a great rest of your day and I'll see you for another episode of Imperfect Marketing.