The 3 C’s of a Magnetic Brand

I was saying that I used to say I do marketing and branding for small businesses. And now I say, I help passionate entrepreneurs create visibility for their brand business and purpose. And when you get that kind of clarity for your brand, you can create this Magnetic Messaging that aligns with you and attracts your ideal clients, and boosts your confidence in the process.

This is The Entrepreneur School Podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to Entrepreneur School.

Okay, if you feel like you're one in a million, VAs are coaches, nutritionists, professional organizers, insert your niche thing here, then this podcast episode is for you. We are in a world right now, where we're all connected on this magical thing called the internet. And it is super easy to feel like your market is saturated. There's so much noise out there. And people's attention spans are decreasing by the second. But before I dive into this episode, I actually want to congratulate you. In case nobody has said this to you today or anytime recently, you're doing a great job. becoming an entrepreneur, it takes a lot of courage and tenacity and commitment and reminding yourself what the bigger picture is all about here. And I know that you do have big dreams for what you want to do with your business. And for the impact that you want to make. And I believe that you're already doing it, you're making it happen. But if right now you're not getting the clients that you want, and you're constantly on sales calls, or launching new offers or trying new marketing strategies to see what sticks, that can be very frustrating. We really there's a sentiment that you have to create a lot of content in order to get visibility. So if you're right now hustling to put out as much as you can, and you feel like nobody's even seeing it. Or maybe you're seeing just a lack of engagement from your audience. And all that seems to be happening is like spam comments, like, share it on blah, blah, blah, send it to this profile, or a handful of likes. It can be really draining. And you feel like you've tried it all maybe you're doing a podcast weekly or guesting on shows you're sending regular emails out, or you're posting on social media, you're just increasing that presence and you're thinking, Oh, I better get on more platforms, I got to try doing LinkedIn and maybe put Tik Tok into the mixed if you're already using Instagram, or you are thinking about just adding more Instagram or adding YouTube to your marketing mix. Or you even start showing up more often like daily. By creating stories on Instagram and Facebook. All of this is exhausting, right. So in order to fix this, we need to focus on your brand because everything else improves from there. The brand is the core of your business, it guides every decision that you make. And when you have a brand strategy. This is what really helps you get clarity on what direction you need to go in, from what marketing to do to who your audience is what offers you should create who you partner with all of it. It is not just the pretty colors and fonts and it is not something to skip over. So it's something you should also revisit regularly revisit regularly because it's always evolving. So let's strengthen your brand so that it stands out.

Today I'm going to walk you through three C's of a strong standout brand. And then we are going to just talk about what each of those things are. And I'm going to try and do it in a nice bite sized podcast episode. owed around 15 minutes. So take me on your walk, take me on your school pickup or take me with you to do your laundry or make dinner. I'm here, let's do this.

So I have been in your shoes, and I have a degree in communications. And I spent over a decade working in PR before I started my own business. And when I decided to go out on my own after lost my mom to breast cancer, I did struggle a lot to figure out the right way to make myself stand out. And I used to attend a lot of networking events, and I was super generic about how I would introduce myself. So think about when the last time you went to something, and you had to introduce yourself, you had 30 seconds in front of the room, or you just met somebody. And they asked, What do you do? And you freeze, right? I used to be like, I'm Kelly and I do branding and marketing for small businesses. Hmm, yeah, that didn't really land, because people didn't know what that meant. Right. So if you are getting the same kind of reaction, you're not able to like articulate in a compelling way. That's what's happening, you're not getting clients, because you're not making that connection with the messaging, even in just the way that you introduce yourself. So you can't use a generic title or just speak about the industry in general, and expect that people are going to line up at the door. So I started promoting my business, when I first started doing things like speaking at local events, attending trade shows, hacking together my own website, 8 million social media posts. And now I have figured out more of a clear code on how to do this well, how to stay very strategic about the types of marketing, I'm doing what I'm saying where I'm saying it, what's worth my time and energy, what's not all of that. So my goal here today is to share some of these insights and help you to make your brand stand out and really shorten that learning curve. So one of the questions I hear the most often from entrepreneurs is how can I stand out from the crowd.

So we're going to dive in now to three C's of a standout brand. And the first one is clarity. So knowing what you stand for, and what you're all about as a brand is really important. If you feel like you've ever been all over the place when you're trying to promote yourself with your messaging or your marketing, and then you have this massive aha moment, then you know, the power of clarity. Clarity is like, related to helping you making the decisions that you need to make. And you can do so with True Confidence. So the clarity around your brand, is really deep work. And this is something that I make all of my clients walk through at some point, when I'm doing coaching, strategy calls, or even inside of brand message mastery. And it's something that I revisit regularly myself, because knowing your values is the first step. So when you can articulate your values, you become clear on how to stay in alignment with them. And the whole point of building a business yourself is doing it in alignment with your values. So knowing what you stand for here is what is the bigger mission and vision behind your business? What are you working towards achieving, and I don't mean like making $100,000 I mean more like making the world a happier place by helping entrepreneurs find success with the businesses that they're passionate about. That's mine. So clarity on this piece, which is also sometimes you hear as knowing your why that's what's going to help you get through those challenging times when you have this thing to connect back to. Part of clarity also is getting clear on your audience. So who is your niche? Who do you help? I was doing workshop recently and somebody said, Why is this the hardest question? How come I can't figure out like who my niche is. And it's true. Because a lot of the times we really feel like we can help everyone. And even though you think that everyone could benefit from what you do, and maybe that is in fact true. Not everyone is ready for your help or willing to buy your solution right now. So your ideal client is actually somebody who is ready to make a change and who's ready to pay for it. My favorite quote around this is from Marie Forleo and she says you can't reach everyone you can't please everyone and you're not compatible with everyone. So please niche down. Please, please please, you can listen to other podcasts episodes that are more specifically on how to niche down, but just know that this is an important step to take. And it doesn't mean that you are like excluding people or leaving money on the table. In fact, when you're able to be more clear about who you serve, people are going to feel more like they are that person if you're super specific, and they can be nodding along at what what it is that you're talking about, that is much more likely to help you get the client, which helps you to help that person in the way that they need your help. And you need to be clear about how you help, right. So clarity around what you actually do. That combination of who you are, who you're for, and why it matters is what differentiates you, and allows you to position yourself and your brand. So know what it is that you are offering, and what the transformation is what is included in the package, what they get out of it, all of those things have to be really buttoned up for you. So I was saying that I used to say I do marketing and branding for small businesses. And now I say, I help passionate entrepreneurs create visibility for their brand business and purpose. And when you get that kind of clarity for your brand, you can create this Magnetic Messaging that aligns with you and attracts your ideal clients and boosts your confidence in the process.

So the second C is for confidence. And the first thing that you need to know here is that you are the only you in this world, your unique story. And your unique skills and your personality are your unique selling proposition. You just need to own the fact that you are 100% unique, you're the only you in this world of like 8 billion people. So let that sink in for a second. Confidence really allows you to build trust through authority. Because when you can confidently share your message and establish that trust from your audience. That's what leads to your sales, the way that you show up like the energy that you bring to it. And talk about what you do can be enough to differentiate you and make somebody like you and want to work with you more than another person who does something similar. Then sometimes your confidence is going to be borrowed by your clients. So when you're confident in your brand, your potential clients see this too. They're not going to buy from people who are hesitant or insecure, right? Like you know that you wouldn't do that. And know that confidence is magnetic. So have you ever done something that you never would have done, like jump off a cliff, and you did it just because you're with someone else who was so confident that this was a good idea. The truth is like you become a leader when you're confident. And confidence and competence are very interrelated to like, the more you practice showing up confidently, the more competent you will feel in what you're talking about and the way that you do things. My favorite quote about this is from Brendon Burchard. And he says confidence is your belief in your ability to figure things out. So contrary to popular belief, confidence doesn't mean that you think you know everything, it means that you are willing to try new things, and willing to believe that you're going to figure it out, no matter what happens, no matter what the outcome is, no matter how many times you fail forward through it, which is going to be quite a lot. But having that big picture vision that you are going to eventually figure it out. And that everything in the meantime is just testing and experimenting and practicing, oh, you're giving yourself so much grace. And that's so important. And people are going to be magnetically attracted to that.

Hey, I just want to pop in for a second and chat with you a little bit about content creation, you know, that thing that you know that you're supposed to do in order to get visibility and find clients online? And you know, you're just not finding time to actually do that thing? Because it can be overwhelming to think about? What am I supposed to write? What video should I be sharing? Where am I going to have the time to make all of the beautiful graphics that go along with having a lovely Instagram page? All of the things? Well, I made for you a tool called the simplified content system. And inside of this, you're gonna find exactly what I use to be able to plan and create all of my content in an hour a week. So it's a calendar that you can edit that you can put in what you're doing where for any kind of platforms, whether you're using Instagram, other social medias, whether you're doing email marketing, Hang, whether you're on YouTube, all of it can go in one place that links nicely to this beautiful caption document. And I've also created a number of trainings and templates for you to make it even easier to get your content out and into the world so that you can be seen, so that you can get clients and so that you still have time to go to all of your kids sports activities. Okay, so you can grab it at entrepreneurschool.ca/content.

So now we are on to the last C. And thank you for sticking with me through this firehose of information. The last C is consistency. So do what you say and say what you do. I'm not talking about just creating consistent frequency. When you're showing up with your content, though that certainly can be part of it. But mostly here, this means congruence, which, by definition is when your words and your actions match. So consistency is super important also in your messaging. So ensuring that you're consistently using the same messaging like phrasing and words, and core points across all the various platforms, so that people don't get confused. Because in one place, you look like you're a coach in another place, you will click you sell health products. And in another place, you look like you're just really focused on taking nice pictures of your kids, right? Like all of that comes together. And it creates a consistent picture of who you are as a brand. So that means your website, your socials, when you're speaking, if you meet somebody, if you have a physical presence, if you have a storefront, or some kind of experience people come in to physically, that's all part of it. If you sell products, and you package them a certain way, the way that they are wrapped, all of those things really contribute to your overall brand consistency. And then you repeat all of this until you are sick of hearing yourself, say, because people are not paying attention. They need they hear you say something like 1000 times, I think it used to be seven, they said took seven times for somebody to for a message to stick. But now it's got to be at least 1000 With the amount of advertising that happens and the amount of like content that we consume every day. It's crazy. And here's the magical thing about repetition. The more you say something, the more confident that you become. This is my favorite definition of branding. It's from Jeff Bezos. And he says Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. Because what you do and what you say contribute to your reputation, and that is your brand. So you know that to be true, even just in thinking about the way that you think about people that you know, like, what's somebody's individual personal reputation, if they never show up, they say they're gonna come over to your house, hang out, go to a party go to an event with you, and they never show up, like you immediately label them as flaky. And the same happens in your business, if you aren't following through on your commitments. That's the exact same reputation. So this is why it's so important to think about what you're saying and what you're doing, and making sure that those things match.

So let's recap those three C's. Number one clarity, knowing what you stand for and what you're all about as a brand. Number two is confidence. So owning the fact that you're 100% unique. And number three is consistency. So do what you say and say what you do. And when you master all of these, your brand will stand out from the crowd. So I hope that you found that helpful is a new sort of framework that I came up with recently to just highlight the important core aspects of the way that you show up with your brand and how that helps you to really stand out. So if you have questions, I always am open in my DMs to talk through these things with you because I know that the topic of branding, which is why I talk about it all the time is pretty big. And it's somewhat nuanced in a lot of ways. So depending on what sort of application you're trying to use to make sure that your brand does stand out and just ultimately having that clarity and confidence and strategy behind what you're doing so that you're not just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that things stick. When you have that clarity, you have that confidence and you have that consistency. As part of your brand strategy. You're going to move forward in a much more effective way. I absolutely promise that's true.