Be Your Own Brand - BYOB

Welcome to the renewed, repurposed, revitalized,  BYOB podcast. BYOB is just a handy metaphor for Be Your Own Brand Here is a podcast all about marketing your most important asset, that asset being the brand called you. We are going to explore various mediums to accomplish this. However, the number one area of discussion is “video marketing” So what is video marketing? How does video marketing make my life easier and how does my business profit from this? Well, this and a whole lot more await your discovery right here. Hello, my name is Ken Miller and I am your host and content curator for this podcast adventure of, “Be Your Own Brand” or BYOB for that handy acronym. Having spent my entire career in sales and marketing I can wholeheartedly attest to the content and valuable horizons being presented herein. Right here at BYOB we're going to be exploring, not only what those horizons are but how to, put you in the forefront of reaping those rewards; professionally, financially, and in your personal life as well.

Hello and welcome into the world of growth and opportunity as has never been experienced in the business world before. Never, has the solo professional had a more amazing horizon than he/she does this very day. Right here at BYOB, we're going to be exploring, not only what those horizons are, but how to put you in the middle of reaping the rewards. professionally, financially, and personally. My name is ken miller and I'm your host and curator for this podcast adventure I call Be Your own Brand or BYOB for a handy acronym.  As explained last session I pointed the direction/focus of byob toward the musicians who would aspire to thrive and not merely survive. So if getting in tune with your future and connecting to the opportunities that await you, right here is where you need to be. And I'm glad you are! Sales and marketing can seem overwhelming and today's landscape even more so. However, I can assure you the heavy hitters in this industry are into S &M big time or they ain't gonna be heavy hitters no more. Your efforts in the S&M arena are not to just get the next gig. It is designed to get you the gigs you want and can excel at. Last podcast episode rolled out the terms “inbound and outbound” marketing. This episode we'll take a look at what those terms mean and what to do about it. In nutshell inbound is getting business to come to you and outbound is winking in the dark, you know what you're doing but no one else does. Or at least the people you want to know what you do. Marketing is for a musician the only way to get attention to what you do. Just a few years ago, one YT video would do the trick, now there are thousands every day, so drowning in other musicians' project is what happens today, not only on YouTube, it is the same everywhere. Check out the entire episode: https://kenmillerconsults.com/category/byob/

Within the arena of building a personal brand as an effective, in fact, it is the only effective, consideration of any solo-preneaur. One genre has stood out as a particularly challenging effort for accomplishing this goal of a meaningful personal brand. Be your profession as a lawyer, accountant, etc., the musician seems to be in an arena all by themselves. Talk about the necessity of personal brand building, nothing in my mind compares, to the challenges of the entrepreneur musician. The landscape for marketing a musician’s brand today is as topsy turvy as it gets. Perhaps the main income source for many musicians, for the past couple of generations, has been club dates and concerts. This venue provided the foundational bread and butter of nearly every professional musician. Covid has all but decimated the club scene and just like that gone! Compounding this problem is the music industry has changed drastically with or without pandemic intervention. The technology that beckons the musician from the pandemic collapse is the same road that entices the future. It is this same shifting of market forces that were changing the industry prior actually to Covid meddling.  Hear the entire show: https://kenmillerconsults.com/category/byob/

We all know - at least intellectually - that marketing is essential if we want to grow a prosperous law or other service oriented business. And yet, a number of things get in the way... and often derail our best intentions when it comes to marketing. One thing that gets in the way is the idea that "we shouldn't have to market." We confuse marketing with the dreaded word “selling”. We’re a profession! And an honorable one at that! Professionals shouldn't have to market... in fact it feels a bit cheesy (and unprofessional) to be marketing... But the (sad) truth is, lawyers and the like are subject to the rules of the marketplace. For good or for bad, whether we like it or not, we have to market - especially if we want to do the work we want to do and make the money we deserve. Daniel Pink in his book “To Sell Is Human” includes this less than glowing description of selling. “Hello sales belch to the smart set sales is an endeavor that requires little intellectual throw weight. A task for slick glad handers who skate through life on a shoeshine and a smile. To others as the province of dodgy characters doing slippery things a realm of trickery and deceit get the speaking parts while honesty and fairness watched mutely from the rafters still others view it as the white-collar equivalent of cleaning toilets, necessary perhaps, but unpleasant and even a bit un-clean. I’m convinced we’ve gotten it all wrong.” Well, we can give Mr. Pink some leeway here and grant him some literary license for over-the-top exaggerations, maybe. I’m sure Mr.Pink expresses what many feel but are abashed to verbalize. It is a safe bet that anyone who feels that marketing is selling simply does not understand marketing. Marketing and sales are so often used interchangeably as to appear synonymous. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just in case you are wondering, The purpose of the marketing process is to express your positioning and point a view in a way that generates highly qualified leads. A point of view is part of your brand! Hear here for the entirety. www.kenmillerconsults.com

Building your business means building yourself. Each and everything we talk about on BYOB is a problem or situation that I myself have or is experiencing. Every day I think and work on methods to increase my own consulting practice and these podcasts are simply the journey that I am traveling. No ivory tower pie in the sky approaches allowed. Remind myself every day I am a marketer that also does video production. “Grow your email list.” “Speak in your community.” “Get active on social media.” “Meet people at events.” “Start a blog.” These are all recommendations a self-employed professional will hear when exploring how to build a thriving business. There’s nothing wrong with this advice. Each one of these approaches has the potential to bring you more clients. But there’s another factor in the business-building equation, and it’s probably the most important. That crucial element is you.

In the past 30 days more video content has been uploaded online than the major US television networks have created in 30 years. Let that sink in for a minute. It's no secret. That video is a powerful force. A force That's been growing in usage year over year in 2018, 87% of online marketers used video. What has changed is how important video has become on every platform and channel across your entire business. And these days video isn't just for people with big budgets. Years ago, video is almost exclusively produced by the high dollar creative departments. Equipment costs were high and measuring video success was limited today, all that has changed. Thanks to the rise of technology. Video is used more widely as a business strategy across marketing sales and service teams. Now marketing, sales ,or service teams, embrace this medium. When done correctly, a video marketing strategy is an effective way to attract, engage and delight your audience in a human and helpful way.

The first step in becoming more adept at selling your expertise is getting intentional, but it's more concrete than that. Every sales meeting, email, piece of content - everything - should start and end with intention, aka an agenda and next steps. Every meeting needs a goal and clear next steps to drive the sale to a conclusion.  Without a doubt at his very moment, you have the situation backward! Here’s why. Seth Godwin’s book “This is Marketing”, sets this situation up-right. Here is an excerpt for illustration: Marketing is not a battle, and it’s not a war, or even a contest, marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem. Marketing involves very little in the way of shouting hustling or coercion. It's a chance to serve instead. The Lock and the key It doesn't make any sense to make a key and then run around looking for a lock to open.  The only productive solution is to find a lock and then fashion a key.  It's easier to make products and services for the customers you seek to serve than it is to find customers for your products and services. And yet this is precisely the order in which we go about our sales and marketing. Yet who needs this pounded into their thick skulls more than yours truly? If you, like me, exist in this new market reality landscape coming from the old “grip & grin” school, welcome aboard!

One of the biggest changes yours truly has had to adapt to is the near elimination of the face to face meetings. Meetings from sales calls or networking I was firmly entrenched in the grip and grin prospecting model. I don’t think that will ever return to the days of yore. Fact is you need not be a crystal ball gazer to know who got you here is not going to get you there. Here is one week before Thanksgiving 2020 and we are still in this lock-down over the never-ending saga of Covid. For the solo practice, these are indeed tough times. Small business is really taking the brunt of all the fall out from the many mandates and declarations. If it was tough getting new business before today is even more challenging. Yet, so often the old mind-set of yesterday is all too prevalent. "Just do great work." That's the common wisdom of how to build a successful expert or service-based business. But it's definitely not that simple. Sorta the build it and they’ll come approach. Which is in fact no approach. And whoever came up with that idea left out a big caveat: you also have to have the sales skills to sell your services. For some reason, the easiest maximum for professionals to forget is “nothing happens till a sale is made. As the marketplace grows more crowded and noisy, establishing a competitive advantage should be your firm’s highest priority. But where do you begin? And is it even possible to differentiate your firm from a host of similar competitors? If you can't sell your services, you won't be able to "do great work" in the first place, and clients who need your help won't get it. In this podcast, I'll walk you through the 7 reasons why sales skills are so critical to selling your expertise.

There are few leaders who choose to inspire rather than manipulate in order to motivate people. Whether individuals or organizations, all these inspiring leaders think, act, and communicate in exactly the same way. And it is the complete opposite of the rest of us. Consciously or not, how they do it is by following a naturally occurring pattern that Simon Sinek calls "The Golden Circle". Hear the rest of the story here: https://kenmillerconsults.com/category/byob/

Here is the home for must-have information for professional service providers. Attorneys accountants financial planners any type of professional service provider business development practice development client client retention no matter what you call it you need some marketing and sales skills to get it done successfully. And there is no better place for you to be good right here for the insightful and informative inbound marketing how to buy extension then getting a lifetime of enhancement and shipment and taking you on a step-by-step journey from barely survive to thrive. It comes as no surprise that what got your here is not going to get you there this is not your Daddy’s marketplace. As if the landscape wasn’t changing  fast enough along comes Covid and presto we are in a sizemic upheaveal unlike anything we’ve witnessed before. One of the biggest changes yours truly has had to adapt to is the nearly elimination of the face to face meetings. Meetings from sales calls or networking I was firmly entrenched in the grip and grin prospecting model. I don’t think that will ever return to the days of yore. Having said that what’s the alternative and the answer to that is remote selling. Today’s podcast is going to explore this new phenomena maybe you call it Zoom meeting, live stream or what term you chose, but chose you must. So, what ducks do get lined up to go from in-person to online selling, with recommendations about specific technology, how to build trust, and how to run an effective online meeting. If you’re making the transition from in-person, offline sales to remote, online sales, you probably have one thing on your mind: Hear here: www.kenmillerconsults.com

How do some firms in your industry thrive year after year—even in today’s topsy-turvy marketplace? Are they just lucky? Or do they know something that you don’t? What high-growth success looks like, including stories from the real world What today’s high-growth firms do differently How you can emulate these firms’ success How much you should spend on marketing How to build a powerful, high-growth marketing plan, step by step I trust you would like answers to those questions and that’s what this podcast is all about as well as some of the things I do as a digital marketing consultant. www.kenmillerconsults.com These are unprecedented times that will require unprecedented tactics, desire, and adaptation. Overnight, the playing field has changed. The strategies and tactics that brought you championship years in the past may not work as well—or at all, in these new times. Chances are, you are behind where you wanted to be. But the game isn’t over yet. There’s still a second-half...still time on the clock. How will you respond?

You will hear conflicting reports about the effectiveness of email programs. The most often is that this is an outdated method, blah, blah, blah. True, email does not have the glamor and excitement some other venues offer but barring that, nothing I am aware of compares to the effectiveness of email. Your email list can easily be said to be your most important asset. I certainly believe that to be true. Consider, average ROI for email marketing is roughly $38. For every dollar spent. Not too shabby! E-mail has the highest conversion rates at 66% which is more than social media and SEO marketing combined. This data is from the Digital Marketing Association. Well, you’ve got the gist of this subject and the accolades continue, but not to be too boring with this podcast let’s move on to: 1.The Problem with Online Marketing As a small business owner, professional service provider and call yourself an account. However, to thrive and not merely survive you must think of yourself as a marketing first and accounting provider second. As such, you face two major problems in exploiting the internet to promote your business online: 1. you want to be certain that it is an effective use of your time and will deliver tangible results-you cannot afford to waste your time going up a blind alley with something that doesn’t work. Unfortunately, I can guarantee that 90% of all small businesses are throwing good money after bad. Engaged in the hope this works marketing. 2. assuming you are satisfied that it can indeed bring results, you want to know what strategy works best for a small business like yours. Tune in for the rest www.kenmillerconsults.com

I believe that “Being your own brand, is a FedEx moment. Absolutely, positively, must be there, for survival in today’s new market reality. This thing called “brand” is your lynchpin for achieving the success you deserve, in your chosen professional services practice. Hello, and my name is Ken Miller I’ll be your host and disrupter for the entirety of the BYOB podcast. Curator of inspiring and energizing ideas, systems, creating your proxy you. Great stuff in store for you straight ahead. It will be informative as well as entertaining as we journey this “road less traveled”. We’ve all seen the ubiquitous BYOB on the party invitation and knew instinctively what that meant. Well, it has a new meaning of Be Your Own Brand. So when it appears on the party invite you’ll know they are referring of course to this podcast! Be your own brand is certainly a whole lot more than the marketing and sales aspects that is so commonly connected. BYOB is about you and what makes you - well, you. The ole axiom of being your self ‘cause everyone else is taken is so true in today’s social environment. Even the Bard himself admonishes with the “to thine own self be true.” It is with this in mind that we delve into todays brand episode and as just mentioned today’s social environment. Social environment today means Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc. As Mark Twain quips the secret to getting ahead, is getting started. Let’s get started… The social environment that exists today, didn’t exist ten years ago, maybe not even 5 years to the extent it permeates every inch of our society today. and therein lies the two edged sword. So our definition of the social environment is Social media marketing. This is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers. If it only started and ended there, no problem. However; it doesn’t. Here is an excerpt from a newsletter I receive from Josh Stemle (Stimlee) and he writes as follows. Hear the rest at www.kenmillerconsults.com

Must-have information for lawyers, accountants, financial planners, and all other professional service providers. ‘Business development,’ practice development,’ client retention…’ no matter what you call it; you need sales skills to do it successfully. No better place for you to be than right here for an insightful, value-packed, and informative sales how to. By extension then, gaining a lifetime of enhancement and enchantment! Taking you on a step by step journey from. Barely survive to thrive. The name of the podcast is BYOB, but we have barely touched on the idea of a brand called you. The brand called you is at the heart of what I teach via this podcast and in training/workshop sessions. Today. I want to ask you about your brand identity, your personal brand identity. What I'm not asking about is your LinkedIn profile or your website or your photo. And I'm definitely not asking about your color scheme or your logo, because that has nothing to do with your brand identity. According to Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. What are people saying about you and what makes you different out in the world? There are a bazillion business professionals out there. And frankly, they're all saying the same thing. And it just sounds like white noise. All of the time, relying on the same sources, the same empty means the same quotes, the same platitudes, the same formulas. It's the same. It's just this buzz, this underlying noise. And with all of the competition out there, how do you get seen?

I’m excited about our topic today and I’ll start with a quote from Steve Jobs of Apple fame. So much is attributed to Steve you’re never sure, but this is attributed to him. I quote: That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” — Hans Hofmann Nothing is more challenging than returning an idea to its essence after it is shared. We are driven to augment, to add our take, to offer input intended to make it better. The result? What seemed simple and clear at first is suddenly convoluted and complicated. Often barely recognizable. Sometimes for the better. Other times, not. I suspect the latter to be the default outcome. How about a case in point. Generating Revenue. Tune in the podcast for the rest of this story.

Hello and welcome once again to the ongoing, value packed “Be Your Own Brand Podcast. Today is Wednesday 5/27, 2020. May is gone. However, here is your pause for developing a “get more business” from my accounting, legal, architecture, etc. practice. By extension then, gaining a lifetime of enhancement and enchantment! Taking you on a step by step journey from. Barely survive to thrive. The other day I was rummaging through some older articles I had written and came across this stat from a think tank called Forester Research. I reported this 2017 not sure of the origin date. Here is the quote, “By 2020 85% of interactions between businesses will be executed without human intervention”. Corona wasn’t on the horizon yet and here we are 2020 and I venture a guess spot on with that prediction. As a review, my business focus is:  I am a sales and market development consulting firm for professional practice enterprises. IN actuality, my marketing efforts are not any different than what an accountant, financial planner, might be implementing. So what I recommend is not without some solid foundations in what I do for my own business growth. Certainly not a “do what I say and not what I do” kind of platform. I hate selling as much as anyone and I do not do any selling at all. This is as much selling as I do these days. I can explain what I do and if that interests you fine, if not I hope you use the information presented here for the growth of your own practice. Win-win or no deal. A simple concept of “responsive selling”, which turns the default explanation of selling on it’s head. In fact it is the only acceptable form selling for today’s buyer.

Odds are pretty good that you & I share the frustrations of this lockdown business. If there is a silver lining to this nonsense it’s that we, you and I, have time to do so thinking about our businesses, our goals, and what might we do differently in the coming months. Without getting into too much crystal ball gazing, it’s a given that business tomorrow is not going to look a whole lot like business today. This is really nothing new, as this trend has been emerging for the past number of years at a pretty intense  rate. The lockdown has sharpened the focus of this reality. So for the vast majority of us, this future is going to require change and even a whole lot of change. Humans are particularly adverse to change. the most expensive seven words you’ll hear in coming months is “we’ve never done it this way before! Conversely these next seven may be the most important words you’ll say today. Here’s an excerpt from: ― B.J. Fogg, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. (good reading) “After you put your feet on the floor in the morning, immediately say this phrase, “It’s going to be a great day.” As you say these seven words, try to feel optimistic and positive.”

BYOB is up and rolling again. It has been way too long since my last podcast but things have really been hectic around the shop. I have promised myself to do better, actually, a great deal better than the past record of podcasts. This podcast is a core function of my entire marketing plan for Ken Miller Consulting. Speaking of core functions the very core of BYOB is debunking the premise “just build it they’ll come”. No one is more guilty of loving that idea than yours truly. No one has been more disappointed than yours truly with that premise either. To jump right into today subject here’s an excerpt from one of my favorite books and authors. Indeed.... that's a fallacy that many business professionals continue to fall prey to...the core message of Michael Gerber's excellent book, The E-Myth Re-Visited. Just because you're good a something, just because you hang out a shingle or create a website doesn't by itself earn you the rewards you think you deserve. One must always be marketing... which, for me, means one must always be creating, nurturing and sustaining relationships...in the real world and in the virtual world... because relationships are the real fuel of business. Couldn’t have said it better myself!  Fact of the matter is I didn’t and Michael Gerber’s book is certainly one that should every small business practitioner should have on their shelf. The question to ask, to thrive or barely survive? What got you here, will not get you there and this is more true today than ever. Our business climate arrived today on steroids. Before corona it was changing rapidly but today it has been turned upside down in an instant and business will have to adapt and adopt. Or simple go away.

Small business is just a hotbed of advertising and business slogans that are of no differentiation whatsoever. Case in point I recently saw a very large billboard and I forget anything about who the ad was or about and remember only it proudly proclaimed that “our people make the difference”.  Now, I would hate to think that the company paid somebody big bucks to come up with an ad like that or a slogan like that.  so fast forward to this weeks podcast I'm going to talk about what we call table stakes differentiators or TSD's as will call them for the rest of the podcast.

There is an urgent need to differentiate today’s professional services firms. From the buyer’s perspective, most service providers are indistinguishable from one another, so buyers are very receptive to signals that indicate one firm is more qualified to solve their problem than others. What separates you from other experts in your field? Since anybody can monetize their expertise, it’s important to position yourself in the market and show people why they should choose you as opposed to other experts. To figure this out, come up with 3–5 unique things that separate you — these are your competitive advantages. Don’t settle for statements like, “I’m better.” Even if it’s true, better is not a brand — it’s a judgment call. Choose traits few others have as opposed to opinions anybody can claim. In my case, what separates me from most media consultants is my experience. I’ve been where you’re at, I know the difference between stuff that no longer works, and what today’s new market reality demands. My unconventional beliefs (Most people overpay of social management and underpay for strategy.) and my experience building audiences for my own projects such as my Be Your Own Brand marketing and other projects. These points of differentiation won’t make you the right choice for EVERYBODY, but they will make you the perfect choice for SOMEBODY.

Brand differentiation is the business development subject of the discussion today. It is one of the most poorly understood pillars of professional services marketing. A surprising number of executives and marketers believe that it’s simply not possible to differentiate firms that offer similar services to similar clientele.In fact, this way of looking at the marketplace is the very reason that differentiating your firm is essential. Differentiation is not about being different for sake of being different. It’s about helping your audience make smarter, easier, more confident buying decisions. Finding a differentiator for your professional services firm is not an easy task. Many firms struggle mightily only to come up with a differentiator that doesn’t really differentiate them at all. A differentiator is a characteristic of your firm that separates you from key competitors and gives you a perceived advantage in the eyes of your target audience. Have you been competing for work that you are more than qualified to perform, only to be underbid by your competition? Or maybe you have been the one underbidding, which leaves you with paper-thin margins and stalled growth. If you want to stop competing on price alone, it may be time to develop a stronger differentiation strategy.

I believe that “Being your own brand, is what I call a fedex moment. Absolutely, positively, must be there, for survival in today’s new market reality. This is your lynch pin for achieving the success you deserve, in your chosen professional services practice.   We all know - at least intellectually - that marketing is essential if we want to grow a prosperous law or other service oriented business. And yet, a number of things get in the way... and often derail our best intentions when it comes to marketing. One thing that gets in the way is the idea that "we shouldn't have to market." We confuse marketing with the dreaded word “selling”. We’re a profession! And an honorable one at that! Professionals shouldn't have to market... in fact it feels a bit cheesy (and unprofessional) to be marketing... But the (sad) truth is, lawyers and the like are subject to the rules of the marketplace. For good or for bad, whether we like it or not, we have to market - especially if we want to do do the work we want to do, and make the money we deserve. It is a safe bet that anyone who feels that marketing is selling simply does not understand marketing. Marketing and sales are so often used interchangeably as to appear synonymous. Nothing could further from the truth.

0000024E 0000024E 0000270B 000026F5 0008E692 0008E692 00007D62 00007DD6 000661E0 000661E0 Be Your Own Brand-BYOB is dedicated to the professional services provider. Our subject will focus on business development and marketing for the solopreneaur professional. Having said that I encourage your input as to what subjects you would a like to learn more about. Getting business to come to you? Developing a fast track marketing effort? What about social media? You get the drift so drop me a note at ken@misterkenny.com thank you.

As this is the second introductory podcast of the Mister Kenny’s BYOB network, perhaps some time spent on introducing your host of this journey Ken Miller. Aka Mister Kenny, would be a good idea. Further, we will take a look at what preamble existed to start this venture.  

0000024E 0000024E 0000270B 000026F5 0008E692 0008E692 00007D62 00007DD6 000661E0 000661E0 BYOB is dedicated to the professional services provider. Our subject will focus on business development and marketing for the solopreneaur professional. Having said that I encourage your input as to what subjects you would like to learn more about. Getting business to come to you? Developing a fast track marketing effort? What about social media? You get the drift so drop me a note at ken@misterkenny.com thank you.