280 – How To Make Your Business Irresistible

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Do you spend huge amounts of time building your brand? Today’s guest reveals the essentials you need to create a strong and reputable identity for your business.

Topics discussed:

00:30 – Topic on building out your brand
01:27 – Building a successful brand name
03:42 – How do you want to be perceived?
04:45 – Treating your brand name like a person
05:15 – Think of values you want to have for your business
06:40 – What are you standing for?
07:52 – Who do you need in the team?
09:22 – When to invest in your brand
11:20 – SuperFastBusiness being in control of its brand
13:40 – SilverCircle perceived as a strong brand
18:55 – Two kinds of people in the business
22:22 – Your name is not the most important thing
22:59 – Be consistent in terms of marketing
24:00 – 2 methodologies in building a brand
25:00 – “Humanizing your marketing”
27:55 – Why you need to use custom images
29:16 – Should you do a professional shoot?
32:50 – Checklist and final tips for business owners

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Transcription:

James: James Schramko here, and today’s topic is building out your brand, so I’ve brought in a branding expert, and I’d like to welcome to the call Franziska Iseli-Hall.

Franziska: Thank you James, thanks for having me.

An Unusual Name
James: I actually remember when your business first started doing business with my business, because of your brand name, how ironic is that? You’ve got a website called BasicBananas.com, so it’s quite an unusual name.

Franziska: It is, and you know, it’s an interesting name because it kind of doesn’t say much about what we do, but people remember. So it’s interesting that you actually remember when we first started using some of your services for our members.

Because every time I go somewhere to a function or some events, people seem to come up and say, “You’re the banana lady.” And that’s a good thing, even though I don’t really like bananas.

James: Well, I did hear at Seth Godin’s Startup School, he was talking about how the more you have to explain a brand, the stronger it can become if it becomes successful. And he gives examples like Google. But if you think about Amazon, Google, Apple, Yahoo, eBay, they don’t really mean anything.

They’re not like keyword domains. Like we sometimes see in the Internet business space, where people feel compelled to have a specific keyword descriptor. So you’ve built quite a strong brand, and then I remember seeing you in a magazine. So you’ve obviously got something worked out with this marketing machine.

Franziska: Yeah, I think we did, and look, I think one of the things that we did really well, we started Basic Bananas, myself and my husband Christo Hall, and one thing we did really well from the beginning was really thinking about the brand in itself and building a solid brand.

So we never ever…I come from an advertising and marketing background, and we never ever sat there trying to design our own brand and trying to, you know, use Photoshop or Illustrator ourselves for hours and days, even though we didn’t really have a lot of money in the beginning, we invested in people that actually are really good at creating that brand image.

And we always were really clear on what the brand stands for, the values and the vision. And I think that’s one thing we’ve done really well from the beginning, and that’s really helped us grow quite a solid brand and attracted a lot of media opportunities as well.

James: Ok, so let me just clarify that. Instead of you sort of building a website and winging it and slapping together some bits and pieces yourself, you’ve called in a bit of a team and a process. I wonder if you could step us through some of the elements of that process, that someone listening to this could use for their own business.

Coming Up With A Name
Franziska: Yeah, totally, totally. So first of all, you know, people always say, “Well how do you come up with such a name? Because you don’t like bananas, Christo’s crazy for bananas, what’s the deal here?” And so first of all, how do you come up with a name?

Christo and I sat together and when we started the business, when I left my advertising gig and he was just running a couple of his own businesses, and we said ok, let’s do this thing, there’s a need in the market for something a little bit different in the marketing space for small businesses.

So we sat down, we thought, “How..” and this is a really good question for your listeners to ask themselves…”How do we want to be perceived?”

So that was one of the first questions we asked ourselves. How do we want to be perceived? And the stuff that we came up with was well, we want to be perceived as a different solution in quite a crowded market. We also don’t want to try and be different to who we are personally.

You know us quite well, James, and you know that we’re a bit cheeky, we love surfing, and being a Swiss I think I’m pretty blunt, sometimes maybe a bit too blunt. But that’s okay. So we just figured out how do we want to be perceived, and how do we want to take what we’ve already got in our own personalities, and put that into the business.

And so then we just started brainstorming names. Once we narrowed it down to maybe two or so names, I think one of the other names that we had was “Tango Like A Mango,” got nothing to do with marketing but I think Christo found it really funny.

But then we settled on Basic Bananas. We really treated Basic Bananas like a person, like a personality, and we started to write down different characteristics that we want that brand, that business to have.

And until now, for the last five years, that personality has always been the same. It’s been consistent, and that’s what’s helped us build that small empire and getting those opportunities for Basic Bananas.

What Are Your Values?
Then the second thing we did after describing our brand personality and treating it like a person, we came up with values that we wanted to have in the business.

So we thought, okay, what are the things that we are standing for in the business? What do we want to be known for? And that’s the second question your listeners might want to write down and take away, and ask themselves this: What do you want to be known for? And that’s a huge question.

And I still ask myself that question, and it’s not the same thing as it was five years ago. I’m constantly evolving, and so are our members, our clients, and the business.

So that can change a little bit along the way. But it’s a really good question to ask yourself. What do you want to be known for? And so that’s the second question we asked ourselves and by asking that, what values do we want to have behind the business?

And right now, actually, at the start of this year, 2014, we had a big team meeting, and we said, okay, let’s revisit our values. Because our values were stuff like fun, integrity, professionalism, creativity, innovation, so we just had a couple of buzzwords.

For the last five years we’ve had the same words. And we thought, you know what, they don’t really say a lot, do they? Like they’re great, and it’s like, how you’re building a brand that’s perfect that way, but how about we make it a little bit more descriptive and more emotional?

And right now, Jess, one of my girls here, is working on a couple of things we’ve discussed, like you know, what are the things we stand for? You know, what are we standing for, like you know, we always prefer to make friends rather than clients, etc. etc., a couple of quirky things, and what do we stand against? What do we not like? Christo didn’t like it.

So I said to Jess, when we brainstormed, I said, “We don’t like wankers. So how about we use that as one of our values?” We don’t like wankers. Obviously Christo, who is a little bit more diplomatic, he said, “You can’t put that.”

So it’s probably not going to be put in there, but we find a more diplomatic way to say “This is not who we want to work with, or who we want to hang out with.” So that’s probably the process.

So the first question was, how do we want to be perceived? Then the second question was, what do we want to be known for? What are our values around that? And then what we did, once we knew that, we then engaged a talented graphic designer and told her exactly what we’re trying to do with the logo, the branding colors, etc. etc.

So we never ever tried to do our own designs. Because it would be way longer than a graphic designer would take to do it.

The Team You Need
James: Ok, so what sort of team members would you involve in this? You’ve got someone who does graphic design, they come up with the colors, and I guess the look and the feel. Who else do you need on the team?

Franziska: So, at the beginning we had a graphic designer to do that, to work with us on the look and the feel, and deciding on the colors we wanted to use consistently, and then we also used a website developer, so the girl would do the designs and then we would get a coder to code it into a WordPress website.

For example, we were actually just redoing our brand a little bit for this year needs to be a bit fresher, and you could also work with a copywriter which I definitely think is a fantastic idea to work with a copywriter. We tend to write the copy ourselves.

I like writing our own copy so usually Christo and I do that, in the beginning or even now if you revisit your brand and you want to really solidify your brand image and go out there and do it well, that’s pretty much all you need.

But I think what I see a lot of, not just in the Internet marketing space but definitely also in that space is a lot of people obviously come on the scene and they try to make money through certain ways, and then they don’t really invest enough in their brand. But it depends what your goals are.

If you just want to quickly make a little bit of money and then disappear, that’s great. But if you have a bigger vision and you think big, and you think, okay, this is going to last for a long time, and I’m going to attract media opportunities and amazing customers and also better customers, then you invest in your brand.

I mean if you look at it, you mentioned Apple. Would Apple ever put out anything that doesn’t look amazing? It would damage their brand. It would suck. And people would probably not be able to trust them as much as they do right now.

So that’s probably one of the key things that I think I would…there are a couple of things at SuperFastBusiness that I’ll talk about, but this is one of the key things that I really want people to take away.

Gaining Brand Control
James: Right. Yeah, well I’m just going to recap there for a bit. Yes, you are speaking at the SuperFastBusiness live event, so I’ve asked you to reveal a bunch of data from your tests, which is going to be very exciting.

On the topic of the web design, and logos, etc, that fits in really nicely with what Greg Merrilees was talking about on SuperFastBusiness, one of the interviews I did, just a week ago from the time that this is out.

We’ve also spoken to copywriters in the past, so you could look up episodes from John Carlton, talking about copywriting, and I think that that’s very very important, especially if you’re talking about what you want to be known for.And the brand values, that really resonates well.

I had a great discussion about affiliate marketing, and I think one of the common affiliate marketing points that comes up is that people automatically just foil into the brand of whatever they’re promoting, and they lose their own identity, or they don’t have an identity.

And that’s one of the main reasons that I cancelled my own affiliate program, and I mentioned this when I was talking to Clay Collins and Damian Thompson. Because people were starting to degrade my brand.

They were squishing around my head, they were putting up dog ugly websites, pimping my products and services, and they put very little care or thought into my brand values, and I wasn’t able to do much about enforcing it. And in the end I just turned it off, and that was the ultimate thing for me.

And since then, SuperFastBusiness has become extremely strong because I now am back in control of my brand, I’m able to be very careful about the quality levels for things that we produce, and I think you can even have a brand if you’re an affiliate, and I’ve proven that with the SuperFastBusiness model, where I bring someone like Clay Collins on and we talk about his software and we link to LeadPages and I do earn a commission when someone buys from our thing.

And before that we built up a whole website called Buy With Bonus, and before that I actually started in the market with the XSitePro cheat sheet, or XSP cheat sheet, and I built a whole brand around that particular product.

But it was unique to me and it was helping sell a lot of someone else’s product, but I had my own brand first, that I then used to endorse someone else’s product.

So maybe you can touch on how someone could transition from promoting someone else’s brand or having no brand at all to developing their brand in front of whatever they want to promote.

And especially I’m thinking, even as much as I dislike it, that’s probably the number one crime that MLMers do, is they have no personality and no brand of their own, they just start pimping something for the cash, and they lose all identity.

And it’s even their most sort of insincere and fake, you know, flying dollar bills and rented sports car stuff. That’s the one that makes me vomit the most.

Franziska: Yeah, look, and I agree and generally I have to admit that generally I don’t work with MLM businesses, but I have committed crimes in the past where I have worked with MLM businesses and the first thing that I would do with them is actually stop that crap and just instead of, as you say, “pimping” this stuff – that’s a great word, actually.

Being a foreigner, I just have a couple of words in the English language that I think are hilarious. “Pimping” is one of them. As I said, of pimping other people’s stuff, if they can, instead of doing that, create their own brand first and then, or as they do their MLM stuff, at the same time also invest in their own brand.

Now two things also that I wanted to mention. One is that I’ve actually seen you, James, throughout your journey, I find that right now you definitely have a very strong brand, and I’ve seen you working on it, which is amazing.

And also one of your brands, which is the SilverCircle, I had a look at your website and it looks neat. And it looks like you’ve invested some time and money in building that brand. And what it does, I think, is it attracts a better quality person.

Because when I come to that website, it’s not like, oh, this looks cheap and it’s, you know, cheap design or homemade. It looks like it’s a properly done website and product, which makes it more attractive for the right person.

James: Yeah, you’re absolutely right, there. And I can tell you statistically that it has been more successful since putting that investment and I lean quite heavily on my experience with Mercedes-Benz. It’s almost irony that I ended up with a brand SilverCircle, because it’s kind of like the three-pointed star in a way.

And the way that I feel about the brand is very similar. I want high quality, and I want the best calibre clients. We also have a no-wankers policy, but I guess we use different words. Probably…

What You Don’t Stand For
James: Well I think you dropped a really big piece of gold there and I want to highlight it, and that is letting people know what you don’t stand for, like what you reject. Because I think when it comes to something like SilverCircle, it’s a disqualification process.

It’s weeding out the people that are not suited to the program or that I don’t want to work with or that I don’t feel excited about. I should never work with those people because I’m not going to get my best results.

So for a brand like that, it’s clearly, I’m trying to make a magnet that I can dip into the box of wood chips and metal filings and just pull out the metal filings and leave all the wood chips. Because I don’t want to have to have a conversation with people who aren’t ready for it yet.

So I do a lot of filtering, but you know, somewhat serendipitously that SilverCircle site and brand is a combination of a James Dyson logo and a Greg Merrilees graphic design, and I worked with both of them to describe what I want SilverCircle to look and feel like, and we did discuss the same sort of stuff.

How should people feel when they come to the site. That’s why we have a documentary. And how do we want to be perceived. We don’t want to be hypey or pushy.

You know, my competition are people who have $25,000 masterminds where they meet three times a year. And we have such a different program that it’s worth shooting straight through that.

You know, we have a weekly frequency and we’re a virtual, global mastermind. We’re like a true mastermind of different people but there’s one main thing in common, is there’s absolutely a minimum earnings that people need to reach before they get there.

So that should be conveyed from the time they come to the site. And all of my customers are the ones who are likely to invest in a graphic designer, a logo, having someone build a professional website, and it’s just a whole different league to this buying a $9 keyword-rich domain and setting up a spammy little affiliate site.

Franziska: Yeah, exactly, and that’s the second point. So you’ve really worked out how you want to be perceived. And I think it’s working really well for you. Because you don’t seem to attract the people that are after the quick fix or only want to spend a hundred bucks a month on something. You seem to attract the right people.

And the second point is, your offering. And that’s one of the big things I will also talk about at SuperFastBusiness, and also releasing some data that we collected last year. We always do a lot of research. I don’t just say stuff that I think is right, because I’m thinking it. I’m not the queen, although I wish I was.

We always base our stuff on research that we’ve done. So last year we did a lot of research about what makes people purchase from one provider or one website instead of from someone else. And we got a lot of really good data on what makes them tick, and what makes them go to James Schramko instead of Peter.

And so the second thing is, and I will share all that stuff at SuperFastBusiness, and I’m really excited about that, but the second thing you talk about is your offering, how you package your offering. And again with the SilverCircle, you can see how you have really nailed how you are delivering it, your program, but also how you’re presenting it.

So when I come to the website, or someone comes to your website, they know it’s not like your competitors, as you say. It’s a different offering, and it’s packaged in a very attractive and almost irresistible way that it will be irresistible for the right person. It will push away the people that you don’t want, which is exactly what you want to achieve with your brand.

James: Yeah, and one thing I’ve noticed is it becomes very aspirational for people who aren’t ready yet, but they would like to be. I think a lot of people know that it’s there, and they’re looking forward to coming on board at some point in the future when they’re ready to qualify.

Don’t spend too much time just creating your brand
Franziska: Exactly, because it’s how you’re positioning your brand. Maybe one other thing that I should mention, because, you know, a lot of your listeners now will think, “Oh God, I have to go and redo my stuff, and it’s going to take me forever to do and a lot of money.

You know, one thing that I also know, James you are big on that too, is there’s two kinds of people. You either go and you spend a year creating your brand, and then by the time you’re ready to launch that brand, it’s too late. Your thing is not that exciting anymore, so that, you don’t want to do that.

And I know that a lot of Swiss people, you know, they would do that. They would spend the year just researching. They would spend money. They would spend a hundred grand on building something. And I actually know one case since it’s in one of my client’s has done that.

They spend a hundred grand on researching, building an amazing website, and an amazing brand. And then by the time that they launched it, it wasn’t really relevant anymore.

So you don’t want to do that. But what you want to do is you want to be quick in implementing this stuff, and you don’t need to get a Mercedes upfront. You can get, what’s a little, I’m not very good with cars, but what’s a little bit of a lower model, let’s say..

James: Let’s say a Subaru.

Start with the basics
Franziska: Yeah, an in between car like a Subaru. You might get a Subaru to start off with. And then you just launch your Subaru, you invest a little bit in your Subaru, and then, as you grow and your business evolves, you suddenly start to attract more of the Mercedes people. You can upgrade your brand a little bit as you go. So you don’t have to wait forever.

James: Oh, it’s so true. You know, SilverCircle started with a Paypal button on one page of my Internet Marketing Speed website, it was, let me mentor you, it was like, literally, order here. It was $700 a month recurring on Paypal. And the first guy that hit that button was a Swiss guy, who ended up helping add a lot more money to his revenue.

I think it was six or seven hundred dollars a day, that we’re able to add to his income. And he was the first one to nibble on the cheese, and it worked out great for him. And away it went, and that was kind of the minimum viable product, we’d call that in the lean startup methodology.

As soon as you can afford to, you can re-upgrade. And it’s certainly been a long term process. Starting with a good logo was actually one of the critical points for SilverCircle. Even before that, starting with a great name. I picked up that name at GoDaddy Auctions. And I thought, that would be a great name for a mastermind.

In fact my daughter and I were thinking about it together. We thought, that would be a great name for a mastermind. So we sort of envisioned this mastermind around that name, and so, it started with a name, then it went to a logo, and then it went to a very simple website with just a video, and a request for people to email me.Now, it’s in its current version. It gets stronger and stronger as the brand gets stronger and stronger.

Franziska: Exactly. And you asked me before, so people that are listening to this episode, you know, where do we get started. And it’s exactly that. You know, it’s half a brand name. I heard a guy, I’m not going to name him, but I heard a guy speak last year at an event, and he said, “What’s the most important thing in your business?”

He asks the audience, “What’s the most important thing in your business?” And then people said, your business name. And he said, “Yeah, that’s right.” And I’m sitting there thinking “What, really?”

Like, Basic Bananas, it’s not the most amazing business name, but it’s working. Or, what are some crappy business names? Like Kleenex, or any brand that is big, what’s one? NapiSan.

James: Tylenol.

Franziska: Your name is not the most important thing. What’s the most important thing is how you’re building your brand, and then how you’re getting it out there.

I mean NapiSan, for example is one of the biggest, or is a big brand here in Australia, maybe, I don’t know if it’s overseas as well. It’s not a great name but they obviously know how to get it out there.

So I probably wouldn’t spend half a year trying to find a name. Just go with something that resonates with you and your audience, and then invest in building your image, and your branding, and also as you say, get a website up, if you don’t have already, probably most of you listeners have a website already.

But just get it consistent, and then be consistent in terms of marketing. So if you’re doing ads on Facebook, or Google ads, or banner ads, or you’re doing direct mail, or strategic alliances, make sure that that personality, that brand personality that you’re building is just consistent across the board. In that way, you can build a brand really fast.

The importance of building your personal brand
James: Okay. So just, sort of, bringing this point on pretty strong, because we’ve seen a bit of a change in this. How do you advise people around building their brand, or building out their personal brand, and how important is this now?

We’re in an environment, I should frame this, we’re in an environment where Facebook requires a real person, Google+ is becoming a little bit more, I guess a bit stronger, more prevalent, it requires a real person, and Twitter seems to be a fairly popular place for personal branding.

How much should you dial in your personal brand to your business brand? You know, you can have people from a few camps here. One is, you know; make it so you can sell it, it has to run without you. That’s the build to sell methodology.

And then there’s the, hey, become a personal brand like an Anthony Robbins or whatever, and sure you might not be able to sell it easily, but it’ll make a lot more cash and you can really pour yourself into it. Can you have both?

Humanizing your marketing
Franziska: Yeah, yeah. Great question. And that’s probably, you know, the third key. So in terms of build to sell or having your personal brand, I totally think you’ve got to do what you want. What do you call this?

So for me personally, I’m doing build to sell. So I don’t necessarily want to be always at Basic Bananas, I’m happy for Basic Bananas to run without us. You know, happy to sit in the beach and surf all day. I’m happy to do that. I don’t have to be famous.

So that’s my model but, some people that I have worked with will prefer to be the person, so the Tony Robbins kind of model. And that’s great too, that’s how they do it. And that’s fantastic.

Now, having said that, we have done a lot of tests lately about humanizing your marketing and that might sound stupid. I haven’t found a better term yet, but I’m just calling it at the moment humanizing your marketing, and what it is, is doing lots of tests where you show a bit of the personality behind the business, or show more of the personality behind the business, and showing personal stories.

So sharing stuff that is not even very relevant to the actual business, but sharing like a personal little story, sharing pictures of you, or if you have a team, of the team doing stuff at work or outside of work, and sharing photos, and just injecting a little bit more of the human element into the marketing, instead of just pure facts and numbers and figures.

And what we have found is, always generally (always generally, that’s not very good English)… But generally, the approach where you include a little bit of personality and you share personal stories and you show your cheekiness, etc., has always converted better than the approach of “don’t show who’s behind it, only show the business face,” etc.

So having said that, I’m not too fast about whether they go for building a brand outside of their personality, or whether they build their personality as the brand, but what I care about is that they include a couple of human elements either way.

James: Nice. So give us some examples of how you do that, or how I do that, that our listener who could relate to.

Franziska: Yes, so definitely I can give examples of both. I know that you James, some of your, a lot of your video tips actually, you include a little bit about, you know, who you are.

You know, at SuperFastBusiness, you would see a video, for example the SuperFastBusiness event video, you include some of you surfing, you coming out of the water, or the beach that you live on. It’s not just testimonials and showing the event venue, you’re showing who is behind it.

So who is this guy James? And also a lot of your episodes that you publish, it’s often you doing something that shows who you are. So you know, whether you’re going surfing, or people know that you love Mercedes, so it’s showing you.

We have done tests recently running Facebook ads, where we, some of the ads show photos of people in a workshop, because the ads were for one of the workshops that we run here, but it’s called Blast Off. So we were running Blast Off ads, and one of the photos is showing, kind of a stock photo, people at a workshop.

The other photo is showing Christo and myself, either pulling a face, or standing on a beach, or walking down to the surf. So it’s showing more personality; so one is a stock photo, the other one shows personality. And generally the one showing a little bit more who is behind the business, and looks like it’s telling a story, is doing better than the stock images.

Take advantage of image marketing opportunities

James: Yeah, I’ve always been advising people to use custom pictures. I think we use them for the bulk of our posts. We either illustrate or we have a picture that’s usually from my podcast.

We take a picture that relates to something that we talked about, whether it’s a bling on a tricycle, or the Reclining Buddha in Thailand or whatever. It gives you a lot of image marketing opportunities.

Now what do you think about, I think you mentioned before, getting professionals. So I had someone come around here and take some professional photos of me. His name is Andrew Hellmich, and I’ll be having him on the show as well, a professional photographer.

I find that, I’m just putting together a guest blog post for Noah Kagan on the topic of podcasting, and I sent through a professional image of me, and it was kind of nice to have a little gallery to go through.

And if you have the image in the right sort of attire that reflects your brand, and I know one of my Facebook profile pictures that he took was really well received.

People sort of detected the professional look, but it doesn’t look canned or hypey or cheesy. You know I’m not there in a pinstriped suit. That always cracks me up, when I know someone is sitting at their desk with board shorts and bare feet.

And then you see images of them in a big, thick, black and white pinstriped suit. You know, with hands on their boardroom desk like Donald Trump, I mean what are they? Why this mismatch, why is this so confusing? So would you advise people to do a professional shoot?

Franziska: Absolutely. And it’s a really great point. I’ll tell you a little episode in a second; I’ll let you know the secret, but absolutely. We do a professional shoot here, either with the whole team, or generally, just Christo and myself, every single year.

We just had one two weeks ago. So usually, every January of every year, we get a photographer and a professional who takes professional photographs of us.

Now we often go outside, because that’s where we like to be. So we usually choose a beach somewhere, near where we live, and we take photos outside. And so exactly as you say, you don’t, you want to be represented as you are.

So if you’re wearing singlets or skirts for girls, or shorts, that’s okay to be portrayed like that in the photo. You don’t have to wear the pinstriped suit.

Now, I’ll give you a little secret. When I quit my gig in advertising five years ago, and we started Basic Bananas, we happened to go to New York that year for a wedding. So we were in New York City, and I decided that I needed a Calvin Klein suit.

So I went into this shop and I bought this fancy Calvin Klein suit. It’s like choosing a pants and a jacket, well fitted, way too much money I spent on it. And I just thought, now that I’m a business owner (and I haven’t even started, I haven’t even had a customer yet, but I decided I’m a business owner), I need to wear this fancy suit, so that I can attract the right people. Now how many times do you think I have worn that suit?

James: The last time I saw you, you had some short pink shorts on. (Laughs) So maybe, I don’t think you’re wearing that often.

Franziska: I’ve worn it once, to get it taken up. Because it was too long, the pants were too long. So I wore it once, and then I realized that this is not my brand. What am I doing? I don’t need to wear a suit, it’s not who I am.

So obviously, that’s what a lot of people do. They go and they think that they have to be a certain way, but you don’t have to. You have to be who you are. That’s the little secret. Sorry, Christo’s still grumpy about me spending all that money on a suit that I have never worn, but that’s okay.

James: Well, why don’t you pull it out and make a video about on-brand and off-brand and you then can justify this wardrobe expense for your account, probably?

So, I was at the airport after going to a workshop with my friend Taki Moore, your friend as well, and we decided to make a little video, which he never actually sent me. I’ve got to follow him up on that.

And he goes on, hang on one sec, and he threw off his shirt and he put on a black T-shirt, and he goes, I’m just going to get on brand. We both chuckled about it. He was just mucking around, but he was conscious, you know.

If something is going to be published, you want it to go out there to the market in a consistent way. I mean he knows this very well. He’s got amazing designs. He’s probably like the world’s best slide designer. It’s either him or Nancy Duarte, it’s probably a two-way tie. But anyone who knows Nancy Duarte will be chuckling.

Show the market how you want to be perceived
James: So alright, let’s bring this home. So we’ve talked about building a brand, and the idea that you should think about how you want to be perceived. You want to think about what you want to be known for, what do you stand for, what do you stand against.

You’ve got some professional help with the graphics, you probably have some good pictures lined up that humanize you, your offer is compelling to the right audience, but not that appealing to people who it’s not for, and you’re putting some humanizing in there with the way that you’re presenting to the market. What sort of final tips have we got?

Franziska: Ah, final tips.

James: What would be like the action steps, like to do right now. If you listen to this, you’re sitting there with Evernote open or a pen or a paper or a whiteboard, what would be the essential thing to do, even if it’s to review something you’ve already got? What would be a little checklist?

Final Tips
Franziska: So the checklist will be to just, probably most of your listeners have a business already and a brand, so go over your brand that you have, and just look at it, and decide whether it’s awesome, or whether it can be done a little bit better.

If it can be done a little bit better, then just invest a couple hundred dollars in working with a graphic designer to help you do that.

And then do it across the board. So make sure that every element that you’ve got out there, whether it’s your social media channels, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, your website, your brochures, that they’re all consistent with your brand. And then also think about, okay am I walking, talking this brand?

Because you as the business owner, you probably want to be an extension of that brand to make it easier. You don’t want to, as we say with Taki, and Taki is hilarious, I know that he’s got his famous black shirt that he puts on every time he goes on camera, but he’s not different. It’s just that he’s, you know….

James: He literally wears black shirts when I catch up with him for coffee. Like that’s his, I think he’s got like six or seven of them. He’s doing like a Steve Jobs.

Franziska: Exactly, that’s who he is. And so you think about it until it’s like an extension of his brand. And he’s managed to create a really attractive brand. And so think about how you can do that.

Now, the little tip that you asked me James, so if I can give you something else to do with, think about how your packaging, what you’re selling. How do you make your offering a little bit more attractive, a little bit more irresistible?

And maybe it’s just about asking your favorite customers or clients about, what would make this offering even more irresistible? And sometimes they say stuff that you already have, but you might not be advertising it.

So they might say, for example, if you are a coach they might say, well you know, what makes you really irresistible is the accountability that you’re giving me. Great, that’s really great data that you got, good research that you now need to use to make your offering irresistible.

So when you advertise your offering and you package it into a neat little thing, make sure that you use those gold nuggets that you get from your customers. So first thing, think about your brand. Secondly, think about how you can make your offering, the stuff that you sell, a little bit better, a little bit more irresistible.

James: Love it! And remember, when people buy, ask them why they bought and put that straight back into your messaging. And sometimes, you don’t know the real reason though. You think it’s something but it’s something else.

Like for example, one of the questions I have when someone joins SilverCircle is why did you decide to join SilverCircle. And whatever they tell me then, is something that I’m sure to incorporate into my future discussions.

Now, for our listeners interested in more on this topic, there’s a few resources I can point you to. One is, we have a whole branding for entrepreneurs’ training called Brand Hot House which was put together, and put into SuperFastBusiness membership by Kate Richards; two is you can check out the live performance of Fran at SuperFastBusiness Live, or if you listen to this in the future, then you could log in to SuperFastBusiness membership and check out the recording.

I’m sure there’ll be some amazing data revealed in that presentation, and this is just the start of what we’ve got to expect and look forward to.

Franziska: Thank you so much. Thanks James. And make sure you don’t call me Fran, because she goes a little bit crazy.

James: Oh, what did she do? Should we test it in the live audience environment? It’s just so much easier than Franziska.

Franziska: You can say it so well, so let’s stick to Franziska.

James: All right, thanks Franziska and enjoy your surf today.

Franziska: Thank you, I will. You too, James, thank you.

James: Okay.

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