How to Start a Personal Brand

Hey mama boss,
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I hope you are having an amazing Thursday!

It's currently freezing AF up here in the mountains. I wanted to stay cuddled up in my cozy bed, drinking bottomless mugs of hot coffee, while wearing extra fuzzy sweatpants and remaining bra-less. Oh, while binge watching the Real Housewives while someone else took care of all the dishes and 75 loads of laundry. #goals 

Buutttt.... life calls, amiiiright?

So, instead, I took my son to school at the booty crack of dawn, went to my workout class, AND did all the dishes AND cleaned my kitchen. You know what?! It feels damn good, too. I have energy, my body feels alive, and a clean kitchen just lights my soul on fire. 

The laundry? Oh yeah... it's still there. Haha. #balance

MKAYYYY, so I know why you're really still reading this. You're on the edge of your seat... you're dying to find out... WHAT IS EPISODE 05 of The Mompreneur Mastermind Show all about?! SQUEALLLLL...... it's SO GOOD. A must listen for every. single. female. entrepreneur. Are you ready to get your learn on?!

When you are doing laundry, dishes, or driving in the car today - play this bad boy and learn....

How to Start a Personal Brand!

My life (and finances) changed when I started branding ME instead of 'my business', 'my products', and 'my opportunity'. TRUST me when I say, there are endless possibilities when you create an umbrella brand that can GROW with you.
In Episode 05, I'll be teaching specifically five areas that will set you up for success when it comes to branding YOU. I also talk about why you need a brand and what branding consists of. You'll learn SO much in this show from crafting an esthetic brand (logo, colors, online personality) to adding valuable content that solves a problem for your niche market. Seriously, a MUST LISTEN for any female entrepreneur.
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I hope you enjoy.

If you find value in today's episode, please take a minute and drop me a review on iTunes. I truly appreciate each of you. Hearing from my community lights me up!

Love and light,
Stef

Listen & Subscribe on iTunes!

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​​​​​Full transcription available at the bottom of this blog post. ​​

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​Hey Friend! Before you go, I have some gifts for you to help you GROW your biz & profits.

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Wondering how to grow your audience and expand your brand and business?

​My secret weapon has been PODCASTING! In a year and half my podcast has doubled my income into multiple six-figures, and grown my community over 100,000 (brain explosion)! 

I believe podcasting is the secret growth catalyst that you might be missing! It is HOW you connect with your avatar and customers in a deep way, creating trust. It is also how you can show up and teach, inspire, and help.

Curious but unsure?!

Come find out if podcasting could be right for you!
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Learn More About Podcasting:  https://startapodcast.gr8.com
​Download my Podcast Launch Checklist: https://podcastchecklist.gr8.com

COULD PODCASTING BE RIGHT FOR YOU?

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Need Clarity? Struggling to figure out how to get started with your calling? Need someone to map out the podcast or course WITH YOU? I gotchu girl.

Did you know besides being a PODCAST COACH, I am also a BUSINESS CLARITY COACH. I help women figure out their calling, niche, and focus. Then monetize using courses or coaching!

GET CLARITY + WORK WITH ME!

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​SHOW NOTES:

​Join the Mompreneur Mastermind Community on FB! bit.ly/successsupportgroup

Become a Success with Stefanie Insider & get early access to my weekly podcasts, a 9-page social media strategy PDF, and access to two masterclasses on sales and attraction marketing!!! https://swsinsider.gr8.com/

Learn more and connect with me! stefaniegass.com

Apply for PASSIONATELY PROFITABLE SPRING 2019 SESSION at limited, early-bird pricing, here. Six weeks to transformative growth in your life, purpose, passions and profits. These courses sell out fast, don't wait to secure your spot.

If you need a graphic designer to create a branding package for you, please email me at info@stefaniegass.com.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

What's up. Mama boss. Welcome back to The Mompreneur Mastermind Show. I'm Stefanie Gass, success strategist, and passive income queen creator. If you're ready to step into your God led potential, create profit from your passions and capture the success that is already yours. This podcast was made for you as always. You can find out more and connect with me over at stefaniegass.com. So grab that cup of coffee or fill up that glass of wine and let's dig in to today's show. Hey, what's up mama boss. How are you? Oh my goodness. I'm super excited to be back and chatting with you today on episode five. How the heck to start a personal brand? If you rewind back? Oh my goodness. About a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, I saw a mentor of mine posting about her branding. You know, my brand and my brand looks like this.

I'm so happy to have this amazing brand. And I'm thinking what the heck is a brand. I mean, all I did was post on social media, about my kids, about my family, about my products, and that's all I focused on was selling. I was just in it to make money. And I did, I had heard the whole thing about sell the lifestyle. So I did a whole lot of selling the lifestyle. Exactly that. And she was talking about, you got to have a brand. And so my initial reaction to having a brand was, Oh, you're supposed to just pick some pretty colors. I can do that. I can just have some colors. And that's really what I thought a brand was. I started doing some research. I started figuring out what the heck is, branding. And here is what I discovered branding was and is so much bigger than colors or then the aesthetic.

So a brand is this all encompassing personality of who you are or who, what your business is? What do you embody the colors? Yes, it does include that the colors, the aesthetic, but it also includes how you come across. So your tone, the types of verbiage that you use, the types of posts you put out there, the content who your target market is, who is your perfect avatar. It also includes the type of things you market. And it includes so much more when it comes to passive income than just selling stuff. So a brand, in my opinion, is this all encompassing personality that you want to shine through. Sham
Brat like a diamond. Woo.

All right. That was weird. I don't even think that was in tune like at all. Anyways, personal brand is you it's who you are. So I want to teach you in today's episode, how to start a personal brand and how to do it in a simple way, because I know this can be really scary. And also overwhelming. I definitely was. I had no idea where to start. I had no idea which parts of a personal brand were necessary when I was really under a tight budget at the time to revamp everything. I also want to teach you why these components, in my opinion are the most important parts of getting your personal brand up and ready.
So yay. Let's do it. 

All right. Here are the five things I believe you should get started with first, when it comes to creating your very own super-duper shiny, amazingly awesome, empowered, and gorgeous personal brand. You ready? Number one, when it comes to a personal brand, you need a title and a logo don't want that freak you out. You need a title and the logo. If you rewind back and you were to look at Stephanie gas, six years ago, five years ago, my brand was creepy pushy spammy network marketer. That's really what people saw when they looked at me. I didn't have a title. My title was, Hey, that network marketing chick, my logo was my product. And I was going about things in entirely the wrong way. Why? Well, because when I decided that this network marketing product, business and opportunity was no longer feeding my soul and I wanted to diversify and create some different streams of income, I had no brand to fall back on.

That's truly what people knew me as though that was really rough. And so I learned the hard way that you actually want to work on branding you. Now, if you were to look at me, you would notice that my brand, my brand title is actually success with Stephanie or Stephanie gas, my name and I have a logo that's success with Stephanie it's gold. And it's this really power, super fun. Red. Why do I have that as my brand ladies, a few reasons why I've learned that if you can have this overarching umbrella brand to what you're passionate about, your streams of income can flow in from different areas before when I didn't have an umbrella brand and I was just the network girl, if I was to go off and say, Oh, by the way, I have an ebook or I have a course, or I do this or that people would be very confused because my brand was all about one product line.

And one company think about what you're super passionate about. What is the impact that you want to make on the world? And then how can you create this overarching brand that covers that whole arenas. It allows for you to have different monetization coming from different areas because my brand is success with Stephanie and Stephanie gas. I have all these different income streams that can feed this one, this one mission, right? This one title I can have a, I do still have network marketing in my portfolio, the podcast in my portfolio, affiliate marketing products like eBooks courses, personalized coaching, like one-on-one coaching group, coaching workshops, public speaking. There are many different venues that can fit within an overarching logo. So I want you to start there. What are you passionate about? And so make sure that you have a broad enough brand and this can be your name.

This can be the title of your business. I just finished up passionately profitable, which is my signature group coaching course that I run three times a year. We had a huge number of women have this massive realization that their brand wasn't right, the name of the brand and the logo. So we worked through that together to come up with what is a title that just really speaks to your passion, the door open so that there are many, many opportunities for income, and it can grow with you. Even if you only have one stream of income, pick a logo and title that can grow with you. Number two, what is your mission? So this is the second thing you need to define. And a mission statement is something that is going to be just a small paragraph, maybe three sentences. And this has your overall mission.

I'm going to pull up my mission and read it to you. My mission is empowering female entrepreneurs to step into their potential, to cross the line from average to beyond bad-ass, to be exceptional and balanced in every area of life. And to finally realize that, yes, you actually can have it all. That's my mission. Now it depends on what you market and what your overall brand is all about. So just think about what are the hard hitting things really. You want to pack this statement with the passion of what your brand stands for and make sure that it's the right size. I think it should be somewhere between like three and five sentences and what your brand stands for. That's your mission? The mission is the why the mission is the, the, what the mission is the meat of your brand. And you're going to use that mission statement everywhere.

You're going to use it on your social media and the about me section on your website on the home page. You're going to use that mission when you close out signature on your, on your emails, for example, like that mission needs to pack a punch, work on that and make sure that your mission really props up your logo and your title. You want them to go hand in hand together. So if you look at success with Stephanie and then you look at that mission statement, I just read to you. It really, really embodies this whole vision for my brand. Okay. Number three, you need to niche in on your niche, like niche, the niche niche niche. Okay. Now I don't, I have so much trouble with this word. Like sidebar lady boss. I'm like, Nietzche nitch. Neesh like that word throws me for a loop.

Okay. We're going to delete that from the podcast. That was weird. Delete from podcast. Okay. Number three is to figure out your niche, target market. We don't know who we're selling to. When we're looking at this brand, we can't be successful because when you sell to everyone, you're not going to have really incredible content because it's too vague. It's too broad. If you're marketing to Joe one week and the next week you're marketing to Sally, you just lost Joe. And the next week you go back to Joe. Well, you've already lost Joe, and now you've lost Sally. You have to make sure when you're marketing that you are speaking to the same person. Every time you do a post, every time you do a blog, every time you do a video, a live podcast, whatever it is, you do come up with marketing material. Does it resonate with that person?

So you have to know who is my literally the most perfect client for me, the most perfect customer. And you have to clarify that in my Pashley profitable course, I have my lady bosses, draft a Barre specific defining paragraph of who their ideal client and customer are. I mean, and this is so specific. Let me kind of walk you through who my perfect avatar and I don't have it in front of me. So I try to remember off the top of my head, what she is like, but I really know her well. So I think I'm going to be able to do it. Her name is Sophia. She's 32 years old. She has three children. She's married, she's highly spiritual. And so FIA runs an online soap. Boutique. Sophia is really struggling though, because she's constantly at trade shows. She's constantly going and networking and Sophia wants to scale her business, but doesn't want to scale it by working harder. She wants to scale her business by automating the process. She's extremely passionate. She's an, a type personality. She lives from her planner. She loves organization and she also time blocks and makes time for everything in her life. Sophia is very open-minded and ready for change. And at least 75,000 per year. That's really, if you look it's Oh, and she loves coffee and wine because hashtag Sophia rocks. So y'all are drafting your avatar. It's not just about she's 34,

Five and a woman in the USA. She likes to sing,
Dig deep, get in there, get to know your Sophia. What is your Sophia look like? Where do, where does she shop? What does she enjoy? What does she watch on TV? What does she drink? What are her business passions? What are her personality traits? What is your Sophia like? Does she think of her as like your best friend? You know her that, well, write that down. You've now clarified who you're actually talking to. So why that helps me and why that helped my girls so much in passionately profitable is because when you know who you're talking to, you know, the tone you should be using, you know, the graphics you should be using. Like I know when I post to Sophia, I can talk about drinking coffee all day, drinking wine, having jacked up toenails. My eyebrows are like running amok. Listen, they're sisters, not twins. So don't play a hate. I can talk about the hair going out of my mole. I mean, that happens to the best of us. I don't know why I keep talking about that because it's extremely weird and embarrassing. I can talk about the fact that I live for my planner and I love it. And I can talk about the fact that we can step in our, into our God, led potential with our kids hanging off of our legs, because Sophia gets me. Most of you are probably

Sophia, right?
Did I just describe you? You're listening to this podcast. You tell me. So when you are talking to your market, using social media and posting and video and live and crafting your brand, you must know who you're talking to. So that's really, really important. Gals, number four. And I get a lot of pushback on this one. So don't give me any sass little lady you need. Number four, a branded photo shoot. And what do I hear when I say this to my clients? I don't have any money for that. Just going to use my
Iphone. Southie click, click,

Click. Tough love time. When you don't have professional looking photos, gals, what, what comes across on your website? I'm an amateur. And I mean this with all the love in my soul, I do because I don't have the money. Fancy photo shoots all the time. I definitely didn't have the money two years ago when I first did one. Absolutely not. I actually traded for, so think about how can I get these professional photos? Is there a service that you offer that you could trade them? Maybe you can do, Hey, I'll post you on my social media. If you let me do, if you do a couple of pictures for me and you start with five, maybe you only need five photos, but these branded photos, they take you to, to a professional level. And I don't mean it's like a headshot, like glamour shots.

It's just like, no, I mean, lifestyle photos, what do you do? What do you do? So if Sophia has a soap shop, she should be taking a picture in her shop, surrounded by all these incredible soaps. And you can see her workshop. And maybe, I don't know, under floating in the round in the air, like, I don't know you guys, but you get what I'm saying, embody what you do in these branded photos and make sure they are professional because you can use those photos on your website. Oh my gosh. If I would've known the value of having professional photos that I could use, I use them for my webinars, my landing pages, my email marketing, all my banners across social media and YouTube and Pinterest. I use them throughout my website. I use them. I don't know everywhere. Oh, my ebook has my branded photos in it.

I think some of my courses have some branded photos everywhere. And I mean, you can go potentially even 250 bucks. Yes. All the way up. I mean, some of the branded photo shoots, if it's like a full day and they're following you around and you're shooting all through the city, I mean, it can be a thousand dollars, but I will tell you that is a tax write off right there. So it's like check the box tax. Write-Offs all good, baby. Woo. I just tell her husband I'm like, listen, listen, Larry, it's a tax. Write off back off my ish. His name's Brad, but it just, it's a tax write off, which is really first and foremost. Awesome. And then secondly of all, you're going to use it for the rest of your business. Just do it, gals, just do it. You need it. And it really speaks highly of your brand.

And it takes you to a new level. The second I had branded photos and I could revamp my entire brand, including my website and my pricing pages and all of those things. It elevated my game and it elevated my income. So super, super important. If you cannot cannot do it, there's just zero money in the budget. It's definitely not happening. Take an iPhone and use portrait mode. Now it's temporary. And I think you can get away with that for a little bit until your brand explodes, which is a great problem to have, or until you reach lob the lead. And you know, you need to elevate your game and your brand in order to attract a different caliber of clients. That's when you're going to say, okay, I'm going to invest in this it's time, but you can have a friend come over and use portrait mode, your spouse, or whoever your mom and have them take some pictures of you.

Okay. Number five. Lastly, you've got to have content that solves a problem. Your content touches on one of two things, a pain point or a pleasure point for your Sophia, for your perfect target market gal, your avatar content, valuable content on a consistent hold up. Are you listening consistent basis? That means you're showing up every day on social media with a post and every week with something, a blog, a quick live, a little mini tutorial, a video, a podcast. If you want, what pet four you're going to do that adds value to your Sophia, pour into her at a high level and just touch on the problem that she has. What am I doing right now? I'm teaching you my Sophia about starting a brand. This is a pain point for so many of my clients. What is a brand? Why do I need it?

And how do I start one? So what am I doing guys? I am adding value to you. My Sophia. And I'm teaching you something at a high level that you can run with. You can say she gave me enough high level information that I have something to start with. Why is that important? Because it gets you guys to like, know and trust me, it gets y'all to hear what I'm all about. Learn. If you enjoy working with me, it gets you to, if you actually implement what I teach and it works for you, you're going to come back for more. And I'll tell you, ladies, most of my customers are repeat customers. I would actually go as far as to say that 60% of the people that have purchased my ebook a course, or have worked with me at some capacity have come back for a second purchase.

Whether that be advanced coaching, a group coaching program, et cetera. When you start to pour in targeted detailed content that you know, your Sophia is going to just love. You really opened the door for them to actually pay you for something because they love your free content so much. They can't wait to consume whatever else you've got. Do you see that your brand should also embody this content calendar and this idea of what can I do to teach important to you in a way that I know will build up my brand, build at my, and it will feed my Sophia because I know her, I know her inside and out. Okay. So there you go. Those are your five simple things that you have to do to get started with a personal brand, easy, right? Super easy. You ladies heard me talk about passionately profitable a couple of times in this episode.

And I just want to mention our next passionately profitable group coaching session. We'll be kicking off in the spring at this time. I am only accepting 30 applicants to be in my group coaching program with me because it is so one-on-one intensive. I give you guys feedback on every single one of your homework assignments. It's this incredible community of women that are lifting each other up, working together. And I want to keep that really special close-knit community aspect of it. Even though we sold out every time that this group coaching has launched, I will have, and I actually just have opened early bird enrollment. And I know it's months and months ahead of time, but the 30 spots will sell out. So if you are interested in working with me in a group setting, we have a live video every week where I teach you a new lesson, whether it be on branding vision, we do vision casting.

We do mission statements, target market analysis. We work on your overarching umbrella brand. We talk about passive income streams to feed your new brand. We go into monetization of your brand. We talk about belief. We beat money blocks together. We have an entire week on money mindset. And then we also work on growth and implementation. Like it is a killer course. It's my favorite one. Don't tell my other courses, but it's my favorite course that I offer hands down. Like I'm so obsessed. I love it. And I think I love it because of the transformation that explodes out of this course. Every lady that's part of my course becomes a close friend of mine. Often we work together again in the future, and it's just such a fun way for them to experience what their God led passion is and realize that they can monetize that and really explode out of this kind of fear written shell that they've put upon themselves.

Love that course, if you're interested or want to check it out, head over to passionately profitable dot G R eight, the number eight.com. Okay. Passionately profitable dot G R eight, the number eight.com. And again, 30 spots when they're gone, they're gone. So if you're interested, hop over, if you're not interested, no worries. I totally hope that you learned something from this podcast today and that those five steps were enough to get you going, because I think a brand is imperative for everyone. You have to have one, you must, and you must make sure that it's overarching and it's not focused on one product or one company, or it's focused on selling. You want to make sure that your brand is the whole embodiment of who you are as a person, a personality and or a brand and business. Okay, I'm going to leave you with an abundance pair as always.

I am so grateful that you took the time to be with me on today's show. I am so grateful that you are here. I really truly pray that you had enlightenment and inspiration as I shared with you, my tips and I shared with you my heart, because this is the stuff ladies that I truly believe in. This is what I have seen, make a massive difference in my own business and also in my client's lives. And so I wanted to share that with you and I pray that you're able to take this information and run with it and take action on crafting a brand that is centered around your God, led passion. I pray that you have unlimited time to accomplish all the things you need to accomplish in your day in your business with your families and in your lives. And I just pray that God finds you and gives you whatever answers you may be seeking now, love and light. I'll see you soon, Stef.