Creating a Personality Driven Brand *Achievement Unlocked*

What does having a personality-based business ACTUALLY look like? We talk a lot about having a brand that’s shaped by your personality but the truth is: it can be seriously hard to understand what your personality or brand personality even is. Not to mention, how to incorporate your personality into your brand in a way that doesn’t feel forced. In today’s episode, we are sharing some key tips that can help you unlock this achievement! 

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Key #1: You don’t need to go shopping for a new outfit, you just need to wear what you already have.

What does the process of discovering your brand personality and selecting your outfit have in common? A lot actually. Think about those moments where you might say to yourself, “I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR!” but In reality, you have a ton of outfits already in your closet. 

When you’re trying to discover your own unique brand personality, it’s important to stop trying on everyone else’s clothes or going shopping every day. Just stop. Go get in your closet and grab something that you love, even if it doesn’t feel new to you, it’s new to everyone else because YOU are what makes the dress look good! Lean in to what makes you special, even if it doesn’t feel flashy or brand new to you. 

Also, keep in mind that your brand doesn’t have to be perfectly polished or buttoned up all of the time. A personality-driven brand is all about showing up even when it feels a bit messy or imperfect. You just have to stick to your core values, own any mistakes or imperfections, and show the messy background details even if it feels scary. HONESTY and VULNERABILITY are musts for a personality-based business. It’s what separates a human from a brand: the emotional connection. 

Key #2: BUT you can try on different outfits in YOUR closet.

 This is basically where you get to accessorize and take note of what makes your outfit stand out. And these accessories may even seem super random. For instance, my cats have 100% become part of my brand. Also, the phrase “hey y’all” is one of my favorite brand accessories. 

To identify these brand accessories, ask yourself what are little things that people associate with you and how can you incorporate those things into your brand identity?

Also, consider what core values or feelings these accessories might represent. Ask yourself WHY these accessories are a part of your brand? For example, with my cats, cats in general are fun and random. I think that is definitely a personality trait of mine that my brand has developed 

Key #3. The “Thank You! It has Pockets” Strategy That Changes Everything! OR sharing instead of selling.

I think this new sales strategy has been the biggest game-changer for me. So you know when you’re wearing your cute dress and you get a compliment on it, and the next thing you say is “thank you, it has pockets!” and then the whole conversation turns into where you got the dress, how much it was, how pockets are the most useful invention ever, etc.? THAT is exactly what I’m going for with my sales strategy now.

• -no hesitation

• -no weird pitch

• -just sharing because I love it so much, and I want you to love it too.

Two things kept coming to mind when I started rethinking my sales strategy.

1.)Enthusiasm is contagious. 

2.) What are influencers doing?

Because of this new outlook, I’ve recently put on my influencer sunglasses instead of business sunglasses to see things in a new light. Like the way they share clothes is never like “You have to buy this thing. It is $10. Buy it now” but it’s more like an invitation like “this is so cute; I’m wearing this to the beach every weekend because I feel like a mermaid. Here’s where you can get one too.” It’s such a subtle shift, but approaching my business like an influencer instead of a salesperson has been transformational for me! 

Key #4: Start matching universal experiences to personal stories.

Stories stick and we remember so many things from stories. So just kind of think about what kind of universal experience could you draw out from the personal stories you already have?  

An example of a person who does this really well is Emily lay. Her simplified whole brand is built on the soul of who she is and the story of her grandmother. She shares about how as a little girl she was always organizing things. And it’s just very lasting and people relate to that. They’re drawn into that.

 She has lots of stories to share about examples in our lives of like, how she uses this product to simplify her life. She might not necessarily talk about her planners or her notebooks or whatever, all the time, but she’ll talk about organizing her pantry and it all goes hand in hand. So, it’s good to share those personal stories to connect further with your audience. 

Even if you’re not sharing a story about a product or something like that, maybe you can just share about something you learned. And then ask your audience like, Can you relate? 

This is a very loose template that you can use for sharing about a learning experience that your audience might relate to: 

• one time I did this thing, and then it led to learning. 

• So that’s why I wanted to share this with you. 

• Call to action: Can anyone relate? 

Here’s an example that Cami created using this template: 

• I was meeting this new group of girls and I spilled coffee everywhere. It got all over my white shirt. 

•  But even though it was embarrassing, it turned out to be a good fun story because I bought all their coffee that whole weekend and I became known as the coffee girl and that’s when I learned that Oh, your mistakes can lead to this whole fun story. 

• Can anyone relate to spilling their coffee? 

Bear in mind, that you probably want to keep the call to action light-hearted and fun. For instance, in this scenario, you wouldn’t say share about a time that you made an embarrassing mistake in the comments because people would be less likely to engage. Instead, you might say something like, “Drop a coffee bean emoji if you’ve ever spilled your coffee!.” 

Key #5: Show up and WORK IT.

Everything has come down to this for me: don’t think; just go. I’m just trying to show up more. In emails, on social media. I’m still intentionally curating what I show, but I’m also coming from a place of understanding my brand voice and not overthinking about having too many stories or too many emails. 

I’ve realized that friendship requires constant communication, and for my customers to have an emotional connection with my brand, I have to be consistent. I want people to anticipate my content.

In the same vein, show people that they matter!! Humans crave genuine connection. They want to be seen, understood, valued. Engage with your followers, love on them, spend time to nurture real relationships. In turn, by knowing them, they’ll get to know you, and buyers want to spend their money with people they know! I put this into practice by responding to all my DMs. All of them. Plus, I comment on other people’s posts when they’ve interacted with mine.