WHAT KIND OF A BRAND ARE YOU BUILDING AND WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT YOU?
Today’s episode is for people who want to stand the test of time in business, who want to be known for more than just a product they sell or how much money they make; for people who truly want to craft a legacy. There is more to branding than what we see on Pinterest. Logos, color schemes and fonts are the surface level stuff. What about your brand story and your mission and your values as a company? How does that appear in your messaging and in your interactions with your clients and your prospects?
Tiffany Neuman is the creator of the Legacy Brand Method and she works with business owners and entrepreneurs to help them scale and grow their brand into something that makes an impact. She helps you create an actual legacy through your brand and she is here to talk about how you can start to shift your brand from a front facing company, business or personal brand into a legacy brand.
IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVER:
[5:25] What is Your Passion and What is Your Why?
Tiffany started her career in the corporate world, working her way up from an intern to a creative director in a large marketing company in Chicago. After she had her daughter, she decided to leave her dream career, took her learnings and applied it into the entrepreneurial world and for the past three and a half years she has been a part of the entrepreneurial world, loving every moment of it.
[7:03] What Is a Legacy Brand?
A legacy brand is a brand that stands the test of time. The process of creating a legacy brand is different. So rather than just choosing a font and a logo, which is important because we are visual creatures, there’s so much deep work that needs to be done when building a legacy brand. What is your mission? What are your values? What is your voice?
To truly create a brand that’s going to stand the test of time for you, that you can evolve under and pivot within, you need to do the deep work to create that and make it happen. Tiffany loves helping her clients look at their 3-5-10 year vision and reverse engineer it so that they have a brand that they can grow and evolve into rather than branding where they are at right now.
[9:23] The Three Vs of Building a Personal Brand
When building a personal brand, Tiffany advises her clients to start with the three Vs: vision, voice and values.
Now, we have all heard of these terms, but for Tiffany, it’s really about approaching it as a self-development process, digging deeper and, as she says, slowing down to speed up in the process. So, rather than just sitting down one day and picking five words to serve as your values, you really need to dig deep.
Next, you need to look at your ideal clients and what is your brand’s story that aligns with them. And then lastly, you need to work on your mindset and let go of fear and accept that messy middle in your business, so you can grow and allow yourself to really expand into who you’re really called to be.
[11:43] Should Your Business Values Mirror Those of Your Own?
Tiffany believes that they should.
According to her, the point of values is to actually live them out, so they need to be prescriptive in a way that you can do that. You should fuse your own personal values into your business, but it takes some work to create them and then actually live them out.
If you’re building a business that’s out of integrity with who you are, that ripple effect will shine through eventually in what people receive on the other end because if something’s disingenuous it’s going to catch up with you. People are making choices based on what they see other companies doing or what they see is working for somebody else, and eventually that piles up and that weight will create a drag in your business stopping you from growing.
[14:47] Mistakes Along the Way
Tiffany shares that one of the biggest mistakes people make when they are building a brand is that they end up building a “Frankenstein brand.” As entrepreneurs, we build the plane while we’re flying and we work with different people and we sort of just pull things together, and then one day we look back and see that our brand is kind of a mess because we build it unconsciously. Not really having clear consistency in your brand confuses your audience, whether that’s the visuals and/or the messaging. You want to have a consistent cohesive message because that is what’s creating trust and leads to a legacy brand.
Another mistake entrepreneurs often make is assuming what people want. Oftentimes, we focus on getting external information and not going in internally. Your message is going to be so much stronger if you go internally and dig it out from inside of you. It will attract the people who it’s meant to attract. And if you do get external, get it from the right places and do your target market research.
[19:21] Getting Clarity
If you feel like you made some of these mistakes in your own branding, Tiffany’s advice is to get clarity on your vision. So many times, we’re in our heads and we’re not really thinking about what is it that we want to create. Then get clear on how you want to be perceived versus how you’re feeling. This is an interesting balance because you obviously want to think about your ideal clients and their wants and needs and, but you also have to make sure that you’re aligned internally.
Oftentimes, we neglect to create that whitespace or that margin to sit in the thoughts and the vision of what we want to create and why. It is important to do this in the branding process so that we have a strong foundation, we have a reason for doing it. You are not creating something for your next launch, you are not creating something for tomorrow or even the next year or two. You are creating something for legacy, for that future vision.
[26:53] Luminary Leadership Incubator
Tiffany is a part of our Luminary Leadership Incubator and it’s been amazing watching her become more and more confident in her craft and seeing other people become the lucky recipients of her gift. Because she truly does have a gift in bringing humanity to the brand and inspiring the visionary to tap into something that maybe they can’t even see on their own.
For her, this experience has been really transformative. Being around like-minded individuals is so important, especially when you’re building something for the long term and wanting to make an impact and make a difference.
I hope today’s episode helps you in building a brand that means something, that stands the test of time and that has legacy to it. If you are interested in our Luminary Leadership Incubator, please go to our website and get on our waitlist here!
And if this episode spoke to you, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review! Come connect with me on Instagram at @elizhartke! If there’s a topic, a question or a guest you want to hear on the show, just reach out and share that. We do this for you so the more you tell us, the more we can serve.
RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Check out Tiffany’s website – Your Legacy Brand
- Take the Legacy Brand Quiz here
- Connect with Tiffany on Instagram!
- Get on the Luminary Leadership Incubator waitlist!
- Did this episode resonate with you? Help spread the message by rating and leaving a review for the show here!
- Connect with me on Instagram!
