There are periods in our life when we suffer from an identity crisis and need to reinvent ourselves. Likewise, there are times and stages in our business when our brand suffers from an identity crisis. There appears to be a gap in our strategy that needs fixing and our brand needs to be resurrected and evolved. I am sure many women entrepreneurs can relate to this dilemma, that’s why I invited intuitive brand strategist, Gina Hussar to my Wealthy Wednesday Show. Gina happens to be an intuitive brand strategist and celebrated writer. Together, we explored many dimensions of creating a brand that has divine natural attributes but is profitable at the same time. Here are some of the ways you can build a service-based brand and a business aligned to your authentic, real self:
See Your Brand as an Extension of Your Real Self
A brand is an identity you choose for your business. At times, you come up with something that doesn’t reflect who you truly are and what you stand for. Worse off, you end up losing your own identity and start feeling emotionally disconnected from your business and conflicted. Your brand shouldn’t be a perceived identity but a real one, something that resonates with your true self and reality. There is no separation between your business and yourself because you and your work are not separate; your work is an extension of yourself. Your brand must connect with your own DNA i.e., your divine natural attributes in order to create a powerful, authentic, pure and yet profitable brand identity for you. The more you embody your unique gifts, the easier it would be for you to get noticed by your tribe. When you are able to capture people’s hearts and souls, they want to work with you.
Be Authentic
People think that their brand should be something glossed over and ultra sophisticated, so as to attract prospects. But if you build your brand on something external or alien to your own identity and reality, it would merely confuse your audience and you would have a hard time selling it. You may have an aesthetically beautiful website but if the message doesn’t resonate with who you really are or what you are offering to resolve your clients’ ABC aka absolute biggest challenges, then it would fail to make the desired impact. For instance, if you swear a lot in real life but your brand puts you forth as a sophisticated and suave person, your customers would be in for a rude shock when they work with you and find you swearing. In Gina’s perspective, the problem lies not with swearing but with a brand that is not aligned with the real and authentic you.
Seek the Spirit and Strategy Combination
When you are starting out as a fresh entrepreneur, you tend to work haphazardly in every direction and over stretch your energies. You are also tempted to try out everything that everyone else is doing, chase out every shiny ball idea. A lack of personalized strategy makes you spend thousands of dollars on new softwares, designing, redesigning, rehashing and repackaging your service until you end up exhausting yourself, your monetary resources and your creative reservoir. According to Gina, a blend of spirit and strategy is the key to your success (something what I call your “secret sauce”). Business should be built in a way that it can be sustained in the long run. So, if the strategy doesn’t feel good to you, doesn’t echo the true you, then you won’t be able to sustain it for long. I have found this to be specifically true as I have made Fridays as my flow day, where I take off from work and try to align my creative and spiritual energies; as a consequence, I have seen my income skyrocket over the course of time.
Be in the Flow
Most of us are working too hard on day to day basis and against out natural flow, that’s why we end up exhausting our mental and physical energies and creative genius at a very early stage. We become what Gina calls “spirit fatigued and burnt out”, and once this happens, we begin to start unconsciously pushing people away, be it our prospects, existing clients, or even our team. Gina advises us not to do this. If it doesn’t feel good to work on a Sunday or when your kids are home or work late at night, then don’t do so just because someone else wants you to. Gina says that you need to wake up on some days in the morning and ask yourself what is the most aligned thing to do on that day rather than keep chasing your unending, elusive to-do task list. Gina even thinks that sometimes and on some days, it is even ok not to do anything at all, go with the flow and work on your flow because when you are in flow, your creative business evolves and thrives. You can teach, write or focus on whatever creative heart-centered business you are running. Journaling is a technique both Gina and I recommend, as it lets you communicate with your intuition. So, take the time out of your busy schedule to journal or meditate in order to understand what feels good and what doesn’t and then strategize accordingly.
Avoid the Absolute Perfection Trap
When we are starting out in our business or grappling with a new idea or project, we fall into the absolute perfection trap during branding. We may delay a launch just because of a minute detail, such as a PowerPoint presentation not being ready. Perfection is not be confused with being in flow because you are trying to chase an ideal. Gina says that when an idea is divinely whispered to you, it is your strongest moment, and if you keep delaying it for some elusive idea of the perfect moment when everything comes together then you are delaying action and delaying your income.
Be Aware of the Contact Points
In the heart-centered line of work, your work can be experienced only through your words, images, how you project yourself on the social media and in person, and it cannot be proven through data and result. There are lots of ways to connect with your clients at an emotional and intuitive level. And when you have a brand aligned with your real, authentic self, you need to align your website, your social media platforms, your emails and even ‘thank you’ and sign-up pages to your brand identity. So, while interacting with you, your audience, prospects and clients get a sense of coherence and authenticity. If you are offering a creative or spiritual service but your ‘thank you’ message is standardized and bland then you would lose emotional contact with your client. So, make sure that your messages communicate what you and your brand stand for at every contact point.
No matter which aspect of your business you are currently struggling with, the branding, the identity, the strategies, the mindset, the profitability, as a Mystic Wealth Creator, I, Luci McMonagle, can help you with it. Through mindful tips and techniques, productivity tools, referrals and useful resources, I can help you fill the gap between your aspirations and your results. You can book a personalized discovery session with me now