The Heart of an Unmistakeable Brand Strategy

In this episode, I'm going to be getting to the heart of how to create an unmistakable, completely unique brand.

When I was in business school, we spent a lot of time talking about branding, examining some of the most well-known brands in the world and what makes them so special—distinctive, consistent, memorable –, at all levels of the business, from marketing, sales, customer service, company culture

There are mainly nine components in a brand that make that particular brand great. When we studied great brands, we went item by item through all of these components. It's their mission, vision, brand personality, logo, etc. To be honest, the brand strategy never really resonated with me because it felt so prescriptive and structured, which is quite different than what those powerful brands convey.

When I was still working in corporate and agency life, I was taught that my own brand is so important and that the things that make up a good personal brand were things like showing up on time, being a good, rule-following employee, playing nice, blending in. And I carried that through into my business brand when I made the leap into entrepreneurship. I was building a brand that played by the rules.

Entrepreneurs are made up of both business and personal brands, and many of us, including myself, is a combination of the two, so I was thinking about how I was traditionally taught and then where I am today, I realized I carried a lot of those weird structures and rules with me when I started my own business. It just felt like I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole like I wanted to make a great brand for myself. It's just when I look at that and how I carried that through when I first started my business. Before I made that leap into entrepreneurship, I was just, building a brand based on what I thought was a good brand, but really wasn't actually a great brand.

 

When you think about the most well-known global brands, do any of them blend in? The answer is "NO." Certainly not. I’ve had this massive realization over the last year that good brands are ones that stand out, that make waves, and that break the rules in ways that are unique to them. That doesn’t mean that they are out banging pans (figuratively, I hope) just for the sake of it. They make waves in their own unique way. Those brands have a unique exterior persona that differentiates them from every other one out there.

So I just started thinking about it, from my perspective as a consumer in the world, what makes a brand a great brand? Without thinking about what I learned in the textbook when I was in business school, or what I learned through conditioning at my corporate job. As I contemplated this over the past year or so, that brings me to a few weeks ago when I was studying & contemplating the Gene Keys.

When I was studying and contemplating the gene keys, I was literally reading the manual or the textbook book by Richard Rudd for the Gene Keys and I was specifically reading about gene key 31, which is the gate or the gene's leadership and of traditional branding.

As soon as I saw that, I just had to read the whole of that gene key in that sitting because it just felt like it was so timely with such synchronicity, and the main message of that gene key number 31 of leadership and frequency. The frequency that comes from your core literally pours out from your heart. Your words don’t matter as much as the frequency with which you speak them.

My first podcast guest interview was completely unscripted and we had all sorts of tech issues, but I was just so excited about what I was saying that I didn't even let the guest, Lindsay, answer things or respond to my questions & insights. All of those little imperfections just made me so happy, and I was like, "Did I even say the right thing?" I hope I conveyed the right message!”, Not to mention all the pauses and misses.

But none of that matters if the message and the frequency that's behind your words and your actions are pure, true, and it's like from your core and from your heart, none of the rest of the words that actually come out, or the mistakes, matter.

It’s helped me trust myself and my own messages much more and given me the fuel I needed to step out of my comfort zone. I was scared of what other people would think when I dropped too many um’s or pauses, and I was self-conscious about it. But as I started reading about gene key 31, it’s wisdom just poured through me. It's given me permission, but also a huge nudge, to step outside of my comfort zone and be okay with starting this podcast, and not just being okay with it, but owning it because of my frequency.

When I think of traditional, well-known brands, many of them have an aspirational quality to them. There is a frequency they are emitting. A vision that they are casting and helping you step into by infiltrating all your senses. If we take the Apple store example, sight, hearing, smell, "taste," and feeling.

Apple is a very sleek brand. When you visit an Apple Store, the person who is next available to you is the one who helps you. The Apple stores have their own unique smell and taste. The taste is actually not like what's in your mouth, but it's very metallic, like a design taste. It's very modern and minimalistic. And there's a feeling, like the feeling of getting your new iPhone and holding it in your hand in the plastic covering. They create that vision." and that intrigue when they put up the store that's like a box shape.

This brings up a huge challenge for online business owners who are virtual. It is difficult to convey a brand when you aren’t physically present. A lot of us are just online by nature of the business, whether it's pre-2020 or post-2020, we're virtual. We're in 2022, and it's really difficult to convey a brand when you aren't physically present.

As I said, a big part of Apple's brand is that multi-sensory experience. If you're virtual, someone can see your brand through an Instagram post. Maybe you have a video, so they can hear you. There are so many different senses that they don't quite get to experience when you're in this virtual world, and so your frequency is such an important factor in your brand, right? Your frequency is an important factor in your brand, but it is not the only one; it is the heart, the core, of your brand.

Even physical brands today, like those that you can go to the store for, have trouble conveying their brand in those tangible, multisensory ways. As an online entrepreneur, that challenge is multiplied tenfold, and many of us as online entrepreneurs have faced it.

For spiritual entrepreneurs, it's even harder when a lot of your gifts are things that are actually multisensory. Whether you do sound healing or reiki, we have it harder than you know. These multi-sensory experiences that a brand needs to have, like taking a step further in your journey of purchasing something that they're offering, I believe that when we think about branding, especially as a newer like a spiritual online business, we get caught up in what that brand looks like and assume that a good looking brand is all that is required to become an unmistakable brand.

Many of us get caught up in what our brand looks like and assume that a good-looking brand is all that is needed to become an unmistakable brand. But the brand that people see is only one factor of your true brand. A truly distinctive and unmistakable brand can be distinguished by only one aspect. That's only one sense out of the potential five senses. You're not even considering the other senses if you're only thinking that a brand consists of a logo, fonts, and colors. That's one sense out of five. When you think of that brand, as I said, it is a multi-sensory experience.

So when you're thinking about what makes your brand unmistakable and distinctive, know that it is truly an expression and an essence of you as the person behind the brand. How can you incorporate those other senses and how do you want your brand to be experienced?

When you are emitting this beautiful frequency that you are, if you're listening here, you are definitely doing that because. You are a spiritual entrepreneur tapped into your own frequency, and so how do you turn that frequency into something that's tangible that adds depth to that beautiful brand that you are creating?

This is where we see the marriage of the spiritual and the practical. As I was reading through gene key 31, about leadership, which is traditional branding but from a more spiritual perspective, the spiritual is the frequency and the practical is systematically translating that frequency into the multi-sensory experience that your soul-mate clients have of you and of your offerings.

You are uniquely & beautifully designed as one of a kind in your human design and gene keys. Your human design and gene keys show you that, and when you apply that inner magic of yours to your brand, then there is no stopping you.

If you're feeling lost or overwhelmed, that is, you feel like this gives you a sense of hope, but you are like, "Okay, how can I approach this more tactically?" This is where I can step in and help you using both sides of my brain and the experience that I've gained over the past fifteen-plus years of experience in education. I'm actually launching a program specifically about how to create an unmistakable brand strategy.

It glows from the inside out by amplifying your own inner magic, and it'll help you systematically capture that beautiful heart of your brand with your frequency and implement it through that multisensory experience to create your unique comprehensive. Your dream clients are dying to see and experience your Soulpreneur brand.