As a coach, you must have a well-designed strategy to market your personal brand online. One of its biggest aspects is just being your authentic self. You don’t have to share every single secret you have, you just have to open up enough yourself so people can trust you. Who you are online will only ever be a fraction of who you truly are. Join Kendra Perry as she shares how you can get your brand on point to start getting customers and hit your biggest revenue goals.
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Get Your Brand On Point! Because Being A Hot Mess Isn’t A Good Look
I’m super excited to be here with you. I’m curious. Have you noticed this? You probably have. You are scrolling around Instagram and come upon maybe one of your favorite influencers. They are on their Instagram Stories or in their feed and are promoting some products. This product isn’t theirs. It’s someone else’s product but they are like, “I love this product so much. It’s helped me with my skin. It’s helped me lose weight.” Something like belly tea. “Look at this belly tea. This belly tea will help you lose weight without exercise and without having to cut carbs. You just drink the belly tea.”
We see this all the time but we rarely see influencers promoting a coach or an online expert. Typically, what they are doing is promoting a product or service. Why is this? A big part of this comes down to something that’s called humanizing a brand. When you have a faceless brand, something like belly tea. I don’t know if that’s actually a thing but that’s the example I’m rolling with.
We could also think of Target, Nike or something like that. These are some brands that we know of. When we think of these brands, we are not associating them with a person. This can be a problem when it comes to marketing because humans connect with humans. We don’t connect with a brand. These facelifts, ethereal logos, we don’t do that but we connect with humans.
What these brands are doing is they are intentionally hiring influencers to promote their product to give their brand a face. They are hoping because you love this influencer for whatever reason, and they are out there being like, “I love this product. I use this product. You should buy this product.” When you see that, you think, “Jillian Michaels uses belly tea, and she looks hot, so I guess this is a good product, and maybe it could help me lose weight.” Add to cart. Purchase belly tea.
Faceless brands pay a lot of money to humanize their brand and to have different influencers or celebrities actually promote their product for them because it humanizes the brand. Without that human connection, people don’t care and don’t connect. I have a student who came to me. She wanted to build an online clinic.
It was herself and a couple of other partners or she had some practitioners and wanted to build this online clinic. She was like, “I don’t want to talk about myself and anything personal. I want to build this clinic.” That’s a problem. What she’s doing is creating a faceless brand, even though she’s the one running it.
I told her, “You can do that but either you are going to have to pay people to be the face of your brand or you are going to have to use your own face.” When it comes to something as personal as wellness coaching, functional medicine, wellness consulting or health consulting, working with clients on health and wellness, whatever you are doing, it’s incredibly personal. I don’t want to speak with a brand about my health issues, but I would be happy to speak to a coach or practitioner I trust.
There’s a difference between a brand and a personal brand. What you are doing as a practitioner or a coach is that you are actually building a personal brand. You have a leg up on these faceless brands because your brand is already humanized because you are your personal brand. I know branding and brand, in general, out there can feel like this intangible concept, and it is, to some degree.
Personally, it took me a long time to understand what that is. I’m going to give you a quick definition, and then I’m going to break it down. The term brand refers to a business and marketing concept that helps people identify a particular company, product or individual. Brands are intangible, which means you can’t touch or see them. As such, they help shape people’s perceptions of companies, products, or individuals.
The easiest way to think about this is what people say about you when you leave the room. It’s what people associate you with. When they think about you and their business, there’s going to be something that comes to mind. What I’m trying to tell you is that your brand is you. It’s your unique personality and vibe all packaged up into your online presence.
Let’s do a little exercise. I will try to clarify this a little bit further. What is the one word that comes to your mind when you think about me? Maybe this is your first time on the show, and you are like, “Stranger danger. I don’t know who you are, Kendra.” If that’s you, then maybe I’m not going to be able to prove my point this way. If you have been hanging around this show, if you follow me on Instagram, or watch my YouTube channel, then you are going to get this sense about me.
When I do this with my students, these are the words that they will say, “No BS, blunt, to the point, mentor, coach, and funny.” Those are typically the words that come up. What’s interesting is that when I do this exercise, those are words that come up multiple times. Multiple people will say, “No BS, blunt, to the point, and mentor.” People will repeat these things.
What I’ve done is I’ve created a personal brand. I have associated myself with certain personality traits and entities. Why is this important? Why does that matter? What it does is creates consistency and identity. That ultimately helps create trust. I was showing up differently every day. Maybe one day I’m showing up, drop F-bombs, and be myself.
The next day I show up, I’m talking soft, proper, and grammatically correct. The next day I show up, I’m very blunt and to the point. The next day, I am talking in big picture and a lot of fluff. The next day I show up, and I am someone totally different. What if that was your experience of interacting with me online? That’s inconsistent. You wouldn’t quite know who I was.
You would be like, “Who is this chick? I don’t get her.” You wouldn’t get me. There’s no trust created from that. You wouldn’t trust me because you would think, “I don’t know who this person is because every day she’s different. Trust is important. I’ve talked about this a lot on the show but trust has been proven, in research, to be the biggest determinant of whether someone will invest in your business.
People don’t invest in companies they don’t trust. People don’t invest in people they don’t trust. We are talking about money. Money is this weird, humanly created thing that runs our world. We have all kinds of beliefs around and mostly feel like we never have enough of them. We always need more. What that means is I’m not going to invest in anything that I don’t trust, especially bigger sums of money.
Maybe I will invest $50 in some skin cream where I’m like, “I’m not sure about this stuff but maybe,” but I’m not going to invest $3,000 if I feel that way. I’m only going to invest $3,000 if I’m like, “This person is legit. This program seems awesome, and I believe that this person can help me get the result that I want. Trust is important. We have to imagine what builds trust.
We don’t have to think about business for a second. Imagine you are meeting a new friend. You met this girl at the party, and you are vibing. You are like, “This chick is cool. We could be friends. Do you want to hang out and get a coffee sometime?” She’s like, “Yeah, that sounds great.” The next day, you sent her a text and then she didn’t text you back for three weeks.
In three weeks, she’s like, “I’m so sorry, I totally missed your text. I want to get together.” At first, you would be like, “That happens. That’s legit. Let’s do this coffee date,” and then she doesn’t show up for the coffee. You are like, “F***.” There’s no consistency there. That doesn’t build trust. What does build trust? Reliability, consistency, leadership, empathy, and kindness.
I want to focus on this consistency piece. The other thing that builds trust is knowing who someone is. It’s the identity piece. Imagine this girl I met at this party. Imagine I meet her and vibe. She seems cool. Every time we hang out, I feel like she has this wall up. She won’t let me in. She seems fine to ask me questions about myself but won’t share anything about herself.
She doesn’t tell me anything personal, and it’s very surface-level. I don’t know about you but I don’t do surface-level relationships or friendships. I like to go deep. I can’t handle small talk. I would much rather migrate to the corner of a party and one-on-one with someone and talk about their horrible and painful divorce than I would talk about the weather or basic bitch superficial s***. It’s not my thing. Maybe you are a lot like that, too.
When we think about branding, it’s about creating consistent energy and personality. How do we do that? I’m going to talk about that in a second. I know you might be wondering, “What about logos, fonts, websites, and business cards? This is what I have been focusing on for my brand.” Those are part of the brand. They are the visual aspects of a brand but are supposed to represent the personality traits of a brand.
I’m a sharp person. I’m no BS. I’m a bit in your face. I’m blunt. I’m to the point. I don’t sugarcoat things. I’m not this soft, warm person. I’m very much more blunt and sharp. That’s going to affect the colors I choose. I’m not going to choose a nice pastel, pink, and purple like pretty and ethereal. There’s nothing wrong with that but that doesn’t represent my personality. My colors are quite bold.
The visual aspects, there is importance in that. We want things to look visually cohesive but those don’t matter if you don’t have a brand personality. People get tripped up on this because they are like, “Who is my brand personality? What’s this supposed to be?” I’m here telling you that you don’t need to change anything. It is just you. It’s who you are.
This whole no BS, blunt thing, to the point, me swearing, me being weird and funny on social media, that’s not curated or crafted. It’s not unintentional. It’s me. This is who I am in real life. If you hung out with me in real life, you would notice that I have no filter. I say the quiet thing out loud. I’m the person who will accidentally swear in front of your kid. I can’t help it. This is how I am in real life.
This is the great thing about the brand personality because it’s you. You don’t need to do anything. You just need to be yourself. There’s some polarity in that. Everything has polarity because there’s this beautiful thing or this weight that’s lifted off your shoulders where you are like, “It’s me. Great.” There’s this darkness and shadow side of it where you are like, “Who am I? I’m afraid to be myself. What if no one likes me?”
That’s the scary part of it. What I will tell you is that it does take practice. Obviously, we are very good at being ourselves in person with our friends, it’s what we do but it’s different when you are speaking to a screen. Nobody is in the room, and I have to be myself. “How would I be myself when I’m in the room? What the f***? How do I do that when I’m alone in the room?”
It takes practice. The first few times you show up on video, and you are writing content, it is going to be very robotic. I have mentioned this before. You can always go to my Facebook business profile, @KendraPerryInc. Scroll down and look at my first few Facebook Lives. I’m robotic. I have no personality. That’s because I was uncomfortable.
These days, Kendra, in 2022 and 2023, can literally jump onto video and talk about any topic for any length of time, and I don’t even feel nervous. That’s not where I started. That’s not where anyone started. It’s getting comfortable with being yourself online, which comes with practice. I’m going to give you some actionable steps that you can take to determine your personal brand in a second. I want to address something because I know this is coming up for people.
You are wondering, “What if I’m a private person?” This is a huge objection I get to online marketing. People are like, “I don’t want to be on social media and share anything about myself on social media because I’m a private person.” We are all private people, for the most part. There are those people who are dumping all their emotions, feelings, and traumas all over social media but that’s not what I’m telling you to do.
There are a lot of private things in my life that is deeply personal and private, and I’m never going to share them with you because it’s private, and I’m a private person. What I’ve done is I’ve taken the most representative parts of my personality, and I’ve brought them into my online voice. That shows up when I do my show, video, and written content.
I’m not sitting on social media having an emotional breakdown when I’m in it and bawling and being crazy on social media. Do I talk about personal things? Absolutely, but I always want there to be a lesson in there for my audience. It doesn’t matter if you are a private person because you can intentionally do this in a way where all you are doing is being yourself, which is much easier than trying to be someone you are not. You are sharing specific things about your life.
If you come and check out my Instagram Stories, for example, you are going to see pictures of mountains, my trips, my house, and my calico cat named Smudge, who I’m absolutely obsessed with. You are going to see some spiritual and some health stuff. You are going to see pictures of my Oura Ring stats and my supplements. There are a lot of other things that I’m doing throughout the day but you are not going to see.
I’ve intentionally decided that I’m going to share my outdoor adventures with you, the upstairs of my house, pictures of my cat, and my health stuff. I don’t share much else. It’s not inauthentic. It’s that I’m showing this very intentional version of myself. It’s still me but it’s not all of me. This is a really important concept to grasp. Who you are online will only ever be a fraction of who you truly are.
We all have very complex lives, intricate and intense crap going on all the time. We can never be all of who we are online. It’s not who we are. It’s a part of who we are. You can almost think of it as an online persona. It’s you but it’s 1% of you. There’s all this other side of you that’s only reserved for God, the universe, new friends, and family.
You can be a private person and still be authentically yourself online to the point where people feel like they know you. If you’ve hung out with me on this show for a while, on Instagram or my YouTube channel, you probably feel to some degree that you know me and you know who I am. You don’t, but you feel like you do. That’s what we are going for.
You do know pieces of me. You know me enough to predict certain things, to see things, and think, “Kendra would love this.” I get that all the time. People will reach out to me on Instagram, and they are like, “Kendra, I just did my first hike.” I love that because they know me enough to know that nature in hiking and outdoor sports are incredibly important to me. I’m excited for them. That’s awesome. They know me enough to feel like they could be my friend. That’s what we are going for. That’s what I want you to feel. I want you to feel like you know me and that we are friends but knowing that none of us really know each other online. It’s the way it is.
What steps can you take to start developing your personal brand? The easiest thing you can do is you can ask your friends and family to describe you in five words. Write this down because these are going to be the most dominant pieces of your personality that you’re going to want to bring online. The next thing you are going to want to do is to take out a journal. It’s nice to do this in the morning or the evening when there are no distractions. Journal the tone of your voice.
What does your voice sound like? I know that I talk fast, loud, and go off on tangents. Again, I’m blunt. I’m to the point. No BS. I swear a lot. This is the tone and the quality of my voice. What is yours? If you don’t know that, it’s okay. It’s cool. Try to pay attention the next time you are hanging out with your bestie. What are you talking like? Pay attention. How do you talk?
Again, you can also ask friends and family like, “What does it sound when I talk? Do I talk fast? Am I sarcastic? Do I have a dry sense of humor?” These are all the things that you are trying to figure out because, for me, I’m being myself. Once you know who you are and who your personality is, that is when you can start to think about colors, fonts or even building a website, which you don’t need, by the way, so don’t waste your time on that.
Once you understand who you are, if your goal is that you are a very soft, gentle, and nurturing person, then you are not going to go for sharp red and black. You can google this. You can look at the psychology of color. You can even google “Best brand colors for soft personality or best brand colors for the sarcastic sense of humor.” You will find that stuff online. Google is your best friend.
It’s only then that you start to think about those. Once you choose a color palette and a few different types of fonts, then you stick with that. What you’ve done is you’ve created consistency with the personality side of the brand, and you’ve created consistency with the colors. Now you have a personal brand. That’s it. I hope you found this episode of The Wealthy Coach show valuable. Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate the ability to get down deep. I love it. I will see you next Monday, same time, in the same place where I help you become wealthy AF.
Important Links
- Instagram – Kendra Perry
- YouTube – Kendra Perry
- @KendraPerryInc
- https://Training.KendraPerry.net/s/lDo3UK
