đ Your brand should be a reflection of you.
How does your brand, in this crazy world, provide safety for you and your body?
Howdy folks,
This is the first time I will be sharing how I will build my ideal client profile (ICP) in public, and what my brand strategy looks like. What it is, who it serves, what it tastes like, what it makes you feel when it walks into a roomâŚ
But first, a story.
Who here has ever doubted themselves?
Doubted what you know, who you are, what the point of your flesh puppet on Earth is?
Surely, you have.
Throughout my life, doubt has been one of my closest companions. Sometimes sheâs an angel, and sometimes sheâs a devil. In 2020, I started an online self-publishing business using Amazon KDP (alongside 20,000 other people trapped inside and pining for a remote future during COVID-19).
My main motivations? A digital nomad lifestyle. (Financial freedom wouldnât hurt either.)
After a year of ups and downs, by the summer of 2021, my business still only made $250 per month.
I decided enough was enough. I was going to put everything I had into creating the best book I possibly could and invest in real coaching. In 2022, I purchased the Publishing Accelerator package from Publishing.com using savings I had been stowing away for 6 months, got world-class publishing coaching, launched my latest book, and made almost $10,000 in both July and August of that year. I didnât even pay attention to the number of copies sold; I just wanted the cash. I flew high for a brief moment.
Meanwhile, I was still working 9-5. That $10,000 per month dropped to $5,000 per month. The ads got more expensive. I was spending almost all my revenue on ads. Margins became razor-thin.
Other people I knew in self-publishing were quitting their jobs, going full-time into KDP, and living where they wanted. Meanwhile, I sat in my pea-green envy, fuming at the universe.
In 2023, as I was scrolling Facebook one morning, an ad popped up across my screen.
Mastermind with Jack Canfield.
Wow.
The reasons I perked up were:
I had watched The Secret a year before, and I learned Jackâs story of using Newsweek to sell a ton of copies of his first book, and
I was so tired from creating my last book that I barely had the energy to create another, and so I was researching ways to sell more copies of my first book. After months of research, I came across stories of Jack, his business partner Mark Victor Hansen, and their humble beginnings as small-time-book-publishers-turned-millionaires.
It was like Life had presented this gift to me. My RAS (the filter in your brain) lit me up: this was it!
The day came⌠I had spent $11,997 out of the ~$15,000 in my bank account and showed up, terrified but exhilarated. (I took off two days from work, citing illness.)
As the event started and we introduced ourselves, I quickly recognized a pattern.
I was amongst people much older than me, who were already very successful in their business, and they had either sold only a few hundred copies or were using their book to get on the Kelly Clarkson Show to promote their business. At that point, I had already sold over 8,000 copies, but because the royalties werenât enough to live on, I deemed myself a failure.
It quickly dawned on me that success was relative. My copies sold were gargantuan compared to the results of anyone in this circle.
My frustration, envy, and anger briefly flickered into pride as the Zoom microphone went off mute and it was my turn to speak. For the first time in a long time, I didnât feel behind. I didnât feel doubt.
I felt confident.
âMy book has sold over 8,000 copies since its launch last June. Itâs just smokinâ.â
I didnât even know where that word came from. I never use words like that.
After that meeting with Jack, Steve, and Patty, three other ladies from that event + I became quick friends. We have been meeting online in our own mini-mastermind once per month since then. They are all talented, admirable, seasoned businesswomen, and yet they still believe I have something to bring to their table.
After many months of confiding in them, they finally convinced me that I knew way more about book marketing and book sales than many people, including the people they had hired to create, market, and sell their books.
They wanted me to teach them and anyone who would listen what I had learned.
Without giving it much thought, on an impulse, my soul named my new brand.
Smokinâ Hot Book Funnels.
Here is my invitation to you:
You have doubt.
You have fear.
And you have a story.
Your secret story of shame and sadness is weirdly the most universal story of all humankind.
Just this past December, I attended my first in-person mastermind event with my 3 authorpreneur friends, Cristina, Kelly, and Cynthia.
Cristina is a brand genius, and her advice to all small business brands is, âYour brand should be a reflection of you. If itâs not, youâre doing it wrong.â
At the end of the day, people do business with people. Not with brands. Not with ideas, nor figments, nor constructs. What these branding strategy exercises simply do is help your business speak as authentically and consistently as you would speak.
Maybe with cuss words.
With a few harrowing stories.
With a bit of backtracking and cutting yourself off and laughing at yourself and quickly glossing over a bit here and there.
Imperfection.
Yet, perfection.
What are the parts of you that you love? That you hate?
Before I even dive into the next few parts about brand strategy and customer research over the coming days, I want you to dig up the pieces and parts of yourself that you canât stand. And then, I want you to dig up the pieces of you that you defend with honor. The pieces that make you angry when someone threatens them.
Thatâs you, in all your glory.
F*ck Facebook, Airbnb, Microsoft⌠I donât give two flying f*cks about those brands. I care about you. And so does every person struggling for a voice out there whoâs using Facebook, Airbnb, and Microsoft in a haze, feeling trapped and wanting out but not knowing how.
You are that brand for them.
Just speaking in your zany, excitable, hilarious voice shakes people up from their slumber. It fills them with juice. It gives them just enough zing to help them hop to the next lily pad. And then the next.
Your brand, in this crazy world, should be the one thing that provides safety for you and your body. A place to come home to. A place to harbor.
For me, my brand name, Smokinâ Hot Book Funnels, represents my lifelong relationship with doubt, fear, and envy slowly alchemized into confidence, and it represents the zaniness to which I prefer to approach life, and my love of business, the written word, and money.
What does your brand name represent about you?
What story do I have the privilege of learning about you from your brand?
Please do tell me your story in the comments below. I would love to hear from you.
Thank you for reading! â¤ď¸ Hit the heart button on your way out to help spread this message.
Much love,
Renee
I like the saying âYour business is a reflection of you.â