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Emily Hirsh:

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having an incredible week, and a productive week. I had to sit down this week on Sunday and really focus on my intentions. I have a lot of exciting things happening. I’m also feeling definitely, really busy and I’ve got my software launch coming in January, which is slowly getting closer and closer. So I am so excited for that, but I have to be extremely disciplined with my time and really make sure my intentions are clear. And my priorities are clear, which when you’re in a busy season, at least I find that it’s really easy to work all the time and let your other priorities slip, like time with my kids, or my workouts, or my walks, or connecting with my husband every day. And so for me, it really helps to make sure that those things that come first, maintain that even through a busy season.

And so at the beginning of a week, I have little specific things. One for me is that I get two hours fully unplugged with my kids and my phone. My work is a way, I actually have been playing with bringing a notebook with me during that time, because I find it’s very hard for me to turn off my brain. And if something comes to me, I’ll, that will be like my excuse of like, “oh, I gotta go grab my phone so I can send this message really fast.” I don’t want to forget. And then it kind of snowballs into this thing. So I’ve been bringing a notebook. So, if I get an idea or I get a thought, I can write it down, but I don’t have to be plugged in. So for me, those two hours with my kids unplugged, fully present are non-negotiables.

I really don’t like to miss that time or have something come in between that time. And then also my workout is a non-negotiable, my walk. And I like to get in the second workout, its a non-negotiable for me. And then even if it’s just 10 minutes, which doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but 10 minutes just to connect with my husband and actually have a real conversation is a good thing. Like if anybody else has three kids, you know, my kids are six and all six and under, and I have three kids and then my business. So getting in a conversation with my husband is virtually impossible. Even just getting 10 minutes to be like, “how was your day?” And having that conversation is a game changer. So those are my three things that come before. Anything else on my to-do list, any of my work.

And I had to get really clear on that this week. So today, I am very excited to bring this topic to you guys, which is creating a brand identity and how that equals improvement in your marketing. I recently went through this process with my team and I think we’re going to work on replicating that process and into our clients. We already do this a lot with clients, but I think this was really powerful, what we ended up doing. And I think right now, especially in today’s industry and market and how saturated things become, I think that this is really important. So I want to talk about this and I want to ask you guys some questions to reflect on in your business that might help you. So I recently onboarded a creative manager internally on my team who is amazing at what he does and creative ideas.

You guys have probably seen the level in my ads, my social media, what we’re doing since bringing that on. We did the same thing on the agency side for our clients. We brought that in. And so having somebody whose main focus is how do I creatively uplevel what we’re doing, and come up with ideas, and stand out, and really hone that in is really important in your marketing. One thing that – he’s been on my team now for close to 90 days, and one thing that he continually asked me was kind of trying to pull out of me “who am I and who is Hirsh marketing and what are our values?” And what do we stand for? Why are we different? And what’s that emotional connection and component that we want to have with our audience. And then how does he take that and portray that into my business.

I think a lot of times for entrepreneurs, we think we’re being really clear with this. And we think we are clear on this, but it’s hard for us to translate this to our team. If you can successfully do that, which means that we’ll allow you to have a team, and a marketing strategy, and messaging that is fully representing your emotions, and who you are, and how you’re going to stand out as a brand, but not requiring you to do everything, to produce every piece of content. It allows you and your team to hopefully produce content. That’s going to stand out because the reality is that emotionally charged and really powerful content is every single time going to be your top converting. We have this thing every time, if I randomly get a bolt of inspiration or something that I have to do, I will write up a post and it just flows out of me.

Or, I’ll just let go and record a podcast. And as a creator, sometimes that happens and you guys might kind of relate to this, where you don’t always just be like, “okay, I have to record five podcasts” or, “I have to re-write seven posts” and you just have all the ideas. Sometimes you do, but then sometimes something comes into your mind and you just like, feel it in your body. Like, I have to share this. And it’s really powerful. So anytime that I’ve had that, those are always our top posts. Those are always our top, engaged posts. Podcasts where I write with that level of inspiration are always our top downloaded. And so the question becomes, how do we replicate that in more that we do and not count on me to get this like bolt of inspiration, right?

Because that’s difficult to plan on. So what we did was, we had a meeting and we kind of joked with my team and we called it “therapy” for me because my team kept saying, “Emily, we need to be more clear on this. We need you to tell us who you are. And what do you stand for.” And all these things. And  I feel like I’m clear on the inside. I feel like I’m very clear on this. I don’t really hold back who I am. I don’t really care. I care what people think, but in terms of my content, I don’t really care. I’m not afraid of losing a follower or saying something to offend somebody. I really feel that I’m very strong. And I think for you guys, this comes out in my podcast a lot.

That’s one of the things that you guys hear like is how direct and to the point I am, how strong I am in that. But I think it doesn’t always translate over into my social media, unless I’m doing the content like right there. Ao they kept saying, “we need you to tell us this”. And I was like, “I am like, what are you talking about?” And so we joked and we were like, “okay, we’re going to do a therapy session with Emily and pull out who she is.” And so I have, my creative manager is hilarious and he knows how to get these Zoom backgrounds. Ao we did this session and he showed up in the background behind him was a therapy office with a couch.

It was funny. Anyways, so we did this call and essentially what we pulled out of it is creating my Hirsh Marketing brand identity. And there are two reasons why you would do this. One, I think, is that you are personally clear on who your brand is and how you want to be represented. What do you want to communicate to your followers? What do you believe about all of those components? And if you’re not clear on that, that’s a really good exercise to do. Now, I felt like I was personally clear on this. I feel very strongly about who I am, and what I believe, and what I’ll put up with, and what I’ll not put up with. But I think what was missing was the second piece of this, which was the communication of this to my team.

And as you grow a team, or as you hire marketing and support, it’s your job, especially if you’re a personal brand and people are trying to take your voice, your words, your belief, and kind of translate that on a larger scale, into other things that you do. If that’s what you need to do, it’s your job to make sure that’s really clearly communicated to them. So I think that’s what was missing for us. I want to share just a few of the questions that were asked, and I have to give credit to my team. My Sales Director Aandra, and my Creative Manager who I have been talking about, CJ, who really helped me put this process together. I showed up to this meeting and I shared as much as I could with them. Then, we’re able to take that and really turn it into what we’re calling the brand identity guide.

So I’m going to share the questions that they asked, and hopefully this will help you really decide and really get clear on this because I found, oftentimes this is in our head as entrepreneurs. We either think we’re clear on it, or we think we’re being clear on it with our team, but there clearly was a lack of that because they kept asking me these questions and I’m like, “I feel like I’m doing this,” but I wasn’t. And then afterwards they specifically felt so much more clear, and inspired, and connected to that emotional component, which allows my team to go do amazing things with our content. So the first piece that we started was really deep on who am I? And, I am a personal brand, so this is going to translate over best if you are a personal brand, but if you’re not, you would ask like, “who is your business?”

And, what would you want someone to describe your business as? So we started with, “how would my husband describe me? How would my friends describe me? Who am I at the end of the day?” That was the first place that we started. And, I kind of brain dumped as much as I could. And we even talked about things like, I’m super disciplined. I constantly strive for excellence. I’m really organized, things like that. But I also talked about things that I can’t stand, things that really bug me in that, in one of them that came out constantly, it was like, “I can’t stand excuses and ultimately, lazy people.” And that comes into play, The Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast, because I think so much of achieving success is just being willing to go do the thing and to not count on somebody else to achieve something for you.

I think that I am maybe not always direct enough when I communicate that, but I think that’s really powerful and something that can translate into our marketing. So that’s just an example. And then the next thing that we moved to was the question, “if my business crashed tomorrow, it was gone, but I still had a social media presence, what would I share? Who am I that I would continue to share?” So I shared things, of course, around kids and my family and inspiration on having people stick to their goals, and not have those excuses, and take actions and those disciplines that I have. So, just thinking about, “okay, tomorrow, and just imagine, just get into that imaginative state.” Which for me is actually really difficult. So it could be for you to just get into that state.

Because I’m very logical, I’m very logical, I’m very analytical. I’m very serious. And so get to that state where you’re like, “just imagine tomorrow, you don’t have the business, you have it crashed, but you still had a social media following that you wanted to show up for. How would you be?  How would you be present? What type of content would you share? What would make you different?” And I think that makes us think, because I do think of course, social media and growing your following and your connection with your audience needs to be related to what you offer and what you sell. But I also think you have to create an alignment so that what you offer and what you sell is in alignment with you, and then therefore your offer and what you sell is in alignment with that.

So it’s kind of like a domino. And if you go to find that you have a big disconnect where you don’t actually want to share information about marketing or health or whatever it is that you’re sharing, but that’s what you sell, you might really need to look at that and figure out, “how do I bring alignment to this?” Because that’s where, if you look at the most successful businesses, they’re in complete alignment with what they share, who they are, and what they sell. There’s no faking it over here and trying to put on a face over here for this. There is just complete alignment, no walls up around that, because that is what builds that ultimate connection. The next piece that we talked about, which was really fun, was if I had to rebuild my business from scratch, I had unlimited time, millions of dollars of money wasn’t a thing, time wasn’t a thing, what would I teach? What would my ultimate brand be? 

And I think this was really interesting because what this allowed me to do is really look at what I think is best about my business right now? What would I carry into that if I was re-imagining my business, what would I carry into that business? And then what do I not like? We also talked about what kind of scares me about my current business. I’m not planning on changing my business. A lot of what I liked I would have brought, even if time and money was not a thing, but this allowed me to see where we excel. So some things that came up for me here was leadership, and building a team, and then process and having the space to rant, and be different with my content, and give that advice and how to build a process around a deliverable or around a result, I absolutely love. 

Also being able to see people kind of break through and have success using that process that I created. So that’s a lot of what I already have and a lot of what I already have in place, but it allows us to see, this is what makes us different, which I think actually is true. One of the things that makes my company different from other agencies out there is the fact that I am so process oriented. And so our delivery is so honed in, so dependent on process. It can happen without me. It can happen very streamlined. We can do it repetitively. We can customize it as we need for different clients. But I think a lot of other agencies, a lot of other companies are service-based because companies are missing that. And so knowing that, that is what makes us different, that piece of information is going to then translate over and help my marketing team whenever they are writing content, or copy, or creative around our services.

So if you just see the connection, we’re just asking me that question of like, “what do I like best about my business? What do I feel like is where I can shine the most? What I’m the best at?” And being able to communicate that to my team now allows them to be more powerful with what they create. Same with, “what do you like least?”  One of the things that came up was sometimes the industry mindset that I’ve shared on here of like that people who don’t want to work or who are like, “Hey, I want to work 10 hours a week and spend zero money and have a million dollar business,” or, you know, people who have poor leadership and don’t treat their business like a real business. Those are things I do not like sometimes about this industry and my business, but that translates, that’s what I want to repel that translates over into our marketing, into our copy, into our creative, because I want to be bold with calling those things out and repelling that.

And so knowing like, here is what I love. Here’s what I am great at. Here’s what I want to build. This is what I want to do more of, this is what I don’t like. This is what scares me or annoys me or triggers me, or I don’t want to attract. That’s really powerful information that my team can now take and, and really utilize in our marketing and our messaging. And then the next thing that we talked about was if someone invited me to talk at a conference and I could talk about anything I wanted, it doesn’t have to be related to marketing or related to what I’m doing now, what would I talk about? And I loved that question too. It pushed me to think a lot of times I am, you know, put in a, relatively, a box around these things of like I’m invited to speak, or I’m invited to be on a podcast.

And of course the topics are chosen and I’m definitely known for marketing and Facebook ads. So I love talking about those things, but actually what I do with marketing and Facebook ads, I think goes beyond. So one thing that goes beyond just that, because it goes into my beliefs and who I am. And so one thing that came out of this was I would talk about, I think one of the things that everything for me boils down to, is living and having the most optimized life. And so that means in business, in health, with your parenting, with your relationships, with your friendships, all of those things coming together and being the best you can possibly be, constantly growing, constantly improving constantly, you know, moving forward constantly, you know, becoming more optimized, becoming better. And so the way I look at marketing is very much that way. It’s constantly improving.

You’re never done. That’s part of our process. You’re always scaling or optimizing. You’re always taking your numbers, going back and looking at them, and analyzing them. There aren’t excuses, there isn’t. I’m very action driven around this. I use failures and mistakes in marketing as opportunities. So that depth to the way I look at marketing, yes, my industry and my niche is marketing, but this allowed me to put the spin of how do I look at things differently than other marketing companies? Because there’s hundreds, if not thousands of other marketing companies out there and we have to stand out. So that comes from my own identity because I’m the face of the brand and therefore our brand identity. And the last thing that we kind of summarized, and this was the most powerful part was, “what are we here to do?”

What is the mission of myself, of the company, and how are we going to do that? And what are those things? So we’re taking the brain dump of what I had in this session and turning that into a powerful statement, redoing that statement for our company, that is such a powerful statement for anybody working on your marketing, helping you translate your voice to your audience, generate leads, generate sales, to have the clarity on. So my question for you guys today is, do you have this clarity? If I was to sit down with you, go out to coffee with you and ask you, what are you here to do? What is your brand here to do?” your answer. Obviously it couldn’t be like, “make money.” That’s not, that’s not a mission. “What is your bigger purpose? What is your ‘why’? What are you here to do? And, how are you going to do this as a brand?” 

Really just sit with that, sit with that for a few days. If you’re not clear on that answer and then go deeper and ask yourself these questions around, “what are you amazing at? Like what makes you different? What makes you shine? If you could forget about time, you could forget about money. What would you do every day? How would you bring your gift to the world and what is that gift?” And I think, I don’t know if you guys will relate to this, but sometimes I feel like because of social media and because of just the online world and constantly seeing what everybody else is doing, I think we sometimes lose our gift in trying to be like other people. And this is so present in marketing, and even I fall into this and maybe you guys will be like, I don’t do that, but I’ll just share it.

Anyway, sometimes I find myself seeing what a friend of mine did that was so successful or looking at a promotion, or a business model, or the way somebody ran a launch and trying to be like, “I should be like that. I should do that.” And so one thing that I think is big for me, is I am not a networker. I have a lot of friends who are absolutely amazing at talking to people, and building connections, and building relationships, and building these various strategic relationships that lead to positive things in their business. I’ve often found myself feeling bad. Like, I should do that better and I would have better results, but the reality is that’s not me. And so we need to stop fighting against what isn’t us and going all in on what is us, because my friends who are really amazing networkers, yes, they’re going to get results from that.

Yes. There’s positive things that are going to come out of that. But also there’s things that I do better that they don’t do as well. And that’s what I should be leveraging. So I feel like in this world where it’s like every day, if you just scroll social media, you’re going to see all these things and be bombarded with stories, and ads, and posts, and emails, and things of people saying like, “this is the way you should do it.” Or maybe they’re not even directly saying it. You’re just watching them. And you’re like, “dang, they’re awesome at that.” Then, you follow that up with the thought of like, ‘I should be so much better at that.’ And maybe it’s true. Maybe there’s room that you can go in and hone that skill, but in the same breath, I think the more you can play to your specific skills and what you automatically are amazing, at the more you can put yourself in momentum there, the better you’re going to do, the better your results are going to be, because the more building your business, and getting results, and achieving your goals feels easy as it should.

If you’re playing to your skills, then the more your business is going to grow. So, I challenge you guys to think about this. I challenge you guys to maybe do this exercise with your team, regardless, having something that defines this is going to help you have clarity in your own marketing, in your own content, and your own messaging. And if you have a team, it’s going to really help them have clarity. And again, a lot of times I think we think we’re clear on this, and we think we’re being clear on this with our team and people we hire and bring in our business, but there’s a lot of room for improvement. All right, you guys, I hope you found this helpful. Send me a message on Instagram. If you did, tell me your biggest takeaway and I’ll talk to you guys on Thursday.

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