Ep# 071: Clarifying Questions To Nail Your Personal Brand with Elyse Archer

If you guys don't realize how much I absolutely geek out on all things branding and marketing, you haven't been paying attention! I am literally obsessed. When you have clarity in your marketing and your messaging, you can actually get your mission into the hands of the right people and make your impact and substantially grow your business and your income. And that is what we're all about on Scaling Up.

I knew today’s episode was going to be great, but I didn't expect it to go in the direction that it went. Our guest went all out for this interview. She gives you actual step-by-step tactics, strategies and questions that you can answer to perfect your personal brand.

Elyse Archer is a personal brand strategist and she is one of the best. She has worked with many different elite people in the entrepreneurial space: bestselling authors, top 100 podcast hosts, eight figure entrepreneurs... She is rocking it with thought leaders throughout many different industries. Today she was on the show to talk all about how to craft and perfect your personal brand--and that's a really good feeling. Let's do this thing!

In This Episode, We Chat About:

What is a Personal Brand really?

“Everyone probably has a different definition, but to me your personal brand is what people think of when they think of you. Each of us has a personal brand, but the question is: How intentional have you been about cultivating it? Are you known for the ‘thing’ that you want to be known for? Or when people think of you, do they think of something else? Really at the end of the day, we don't own our personal brand. The world owns your personal brand. You can influence it by the way you present yourself and by the content you create, but it's not really yours. I think that's a clear distinction that people have to make.”

The Power of a Personal Brand

“I was able to build a six figure business within the first year and then go on to exceed my financial goals. And I had a business that was primarily inbound. People were reaching out to me saying, ‘I've heard about you, I've seen you online, I’ve watched your videos, I want to work with you.’ It was so easy to grow and scale because I was known. And I think that's the power of a personal brand--you can more easily grow your business. People know you, they trust you, they want to work with you.”

“I see a lot of really raped service professionals, coaches, entrepreneurs who are like almost afraid to promote themselves. And I think it's a disservice to your customer because your customer doesn't know you're there. They're going to work with someone who may not be as qualified as you, not as good as you. They're going to have a poor experience because you didn't put yourself out there. So I think it's our duty and our obligation to be known when we're good at something, thinking when we can help people.”

How to Become Known (Even If You are Just Getting Started)

“A lot of times the first thing we think is, ‘Okay, I need a logo, I need a website, I need an Instagram account.’ And we go and we spend a lot of time and money on these things, but there's no true substance to it because we’re not really clear on who we are, what problem we solve for people, what our message is, and what we’re all about. I would equate it to trying to build a house without having a blueprint. It's not that you can't make it work eventually, but there's going to be a lot of tear downs and a lot of wasted time and money.”

Elyse’s 6 Questions to Help You Get Clarity on Your Message:

What Problem Do You Solve? “Your personal brand is not about you, it’s about the problem you solve for other people.” Try to answer this in just ONE word!
What Are You Passionate About? “Passion can be positive-it can be what lights you up-and it also can be what ticks you off!”
What Are You Qualified For? What have you read about, researched, studied, etc.?
What Do You Have Results In? “This is your street cred...Your brand is going to be strongest when it’s built from a place of real integrity.”
What Will People Buy From You? “There are five different ways you can monetize your personal brand (PAIDS):
- Products
- Affiliates and Brands
- Information: courses, memberships, e-books, etc.
- Deals (brand deals)
- Services
What Business Do You Want To Be In? If time freedom and leverage is important, we like to look at the DARES of what you are creating:

Is it Digital?
Is it Automated?
Is it Recurring?
Is it Evergreen?
Is it Scalable?

The more of these you can say “Yes” to, the more time freedom and leverage you will have.

How to Utilize These Strategies When You’ve Already Been “In the Game” for a While

“These questions are powerful because we have to take a step away sometimes to look at what's really working and what's not and what's going to serve the future vision for our life versus where we are right now.”

“I would recommend doing a revenue streams assessment and look at each of the things that are revenue streams in your business or that are bringing you money and take a look at how long does it take you every week, how much money did you make from it last year? How much do you enjoy it? You know, is it life-giving or is it soul draining? And then what's the future potential of it? And kind of rank out every single thing that you're doing in your business. And a lot of times you'll take a look at it and something will show up. It's like, we just need to stop doing that.”

“There might be aspects of your business that totally suck your energy and drain you, like every time you have to do it it's like pulling teeth and it's not even really producing for you. Or maybe it's your top producer and then you really have to look at your business model and say, ‘I don't want to be coaching this particular person one-on-one forever. This is not what I want to do.’ You have this luxury when you're running your own business! You’re the boss! You get to decide what this is going to look like. You get to pivot when you want to pivot.”

“I think it's really just about giving yourself the permission to really streamline and realize you don't have to do everything. You don't have to sell everything. How can you simplify this? And that's usually where the magic starts that scaling up process to multiple six figures, seven figures and beyond.”

The Biggest Mistakes Elyse Sees:

Launching a brand without a strategy for building an email list: “At the end of the day, if people aren’t on your list, you don’t have a direct way to communicate with them.”

Spending a lot of money on ads before having a funnel
Lack of confidence: “I think it's human nature, because I hear it regardless of the level that someone is at. But I really believe that everything in your life that has happened to you, whether good or bad, is so you can help somebody else through the same thing. Help them through the pain, help them avoid the same pitfalls. Your life story is important and you are unique in this world. No one else has had the exact same experiences or story as you.”

The things that are truly unique to us and special to us seem totally normal to us because we live them, we breathe them. That's just who we are. So it's really easy to minimize that skill, that experience, the thing that we lived through. But those things are what make us, us. They're major pieces of our story and that can and should be brought into our personal brands.