How I Got Started with a Brand Online

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In the past couple of months, probably because of some articles that have come out and some of the opportunities that I’ve had to speak to this, I’ve gotten more questions again about, “How did you get started? What do I need to know if I would like to start a brand online, if I would like to write a book, and if I would like to get going in this thought leadership kind of space?”

So, today, as we’re near the three-year anniversary of Voice of Influence, Rosanne and I thought it would be fun to sit down and have a chat about the journey I’ve been on. Because going back and looking at that more clearly and with more detail could be helpful to somebody who is really interested in knowing how they can go on this journey for themselves.

In this episode, we discuss the timeline of my personal journey, the mindset it took to get over the hump so that I could get started, the mindset it has taken to continue plodding down this path, the immense value of bringing other expert perspectives in on your process, what you need to know to get started, what I would tell myself if I could go back six years, and more!

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

So, today, because we’re kind of at that three-year anniversary mark of Voice of Influence, Rosanne and I thought it would be fun to sit down and just kind of have a discussion about the journey that I’ve been on. Because going back and looking at that more clearly and with more detail could be helpful to somebody who is really interested in knowing how they can go on this journey for themselves.

So, today, we are going to talk about the timeline of my personal journey, and then we’re going to dive into mindset – the mindset that it took to kind of get over the hump so that I could get started, and then the mindset that it has taken to continue to plod down this path. And plodding is sometimes how it has felt. It’s not a quick and easy journey; it is something that it’s so worth it if you feel like you really have a mission, but it is hard.

So, I applaud anybody who is feeling that call, that urge to do something and you’re ready to take that next step, so that is part of what we’ll talk about. We’ll talk about what kind of mindset and heartset, I guess, it would take to continue down a journey like that.

We also talked about the immense value of bringing other expert perspectives in on your process. There are a lot of ways that I did this – including listening to courses, and books, and podcasts, and taking courses – but one, in particular, was actually bringing Rosanne on. And I’ll share with you a little bit more about our relationship – how she and I worked together, and how helpful it has been to our process.

We’ll talk about what you need to know to get started. And then finally, if I could go back six years, what would I tell myself back then? I hope you enjoy this little journey to the past and that it might be helpful for your journey.

Here’s my conversation with Rosanne:

Rosanne: Hi, this is Rosanne Moore at Voice of Influence. I’m the Communication Specialist here, and today we’re going to be doing something a little different. I’m going to be interviewing Andrea as we’ve had a lot of questions from listeners for Andrea regarding how should someone who has a voice that they want to expand upon, a mission or vision that they want to share more widely, how does someone like that get started. And what did that journey look like for Andrea? We’re coming up on our third year anniversary of the podcast, and so that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

Andrea: That’s right. I really can resonate with these folks. I understand where you’re coming from. If you’re somebody who is in that position where you’re like, “I feel like I’ve got something else to share.” Or “I have this message and I need to get it out into the world.” I know exactly what you’re feeling because I remember about… Rosanne, this is interesting because about I’d say almost nine years ago, I was at a gathering for young moms and a speaker came, and she spoke to us and shared about her book. And I was just like, “Ohh, I feel like I should be up there doing the same thing.” I just had the sense of like, “I need to be doing that.” And I remember going up to her afterwards and be like “How did you get started?” So, I totally understand where you’re coming if you’re somebody that’s thinking this, and that’s the reason why we really want to dive into this today.

Rosanne: So, Andrea, for you, what was the timeline of developing your vision and your company?

Andrea: That’s an interesting question, because, I mean, if it really developed over the course of the last six years or so. I’d say that I kind of knew that I wanted to speak and write and things like that all growing up. And anytime I had the opportunity to speak or to lead a small group or to provide a retreat or something like that, I would jump at that opportunity. And then I kind of got into that place where I was, you know, a stay-at-home mom. My kids were just getting to the point where I felt like I could breathe again. My daughter was in school and my son was going to preschool, and my husband and I decided, “Okay, let’s take preschool time, at least feel free to take that time to actually do some writing – to work on developing some things.”

So, I started developing things back in 2013; I was developing a curriculum called Intentional Friendship. And that’s when I went to the movie Frozen, and it just sort of catapulted me into a different level of, “Oh my gosh, I can’t just try to stay behind the scenes and offer some sort of writings without putting myself out there. I’m gonna have to really put myself out there in order to have a bigger influence.” That was 2013.

A year later, I wrote my first blog post because it took me that long to figure out what in the world I wanted to say and how I was going to say it. Right around that same time, I had a friend that said, “You really need to write a book about this – people need to hear what you have to say.” So, at that point, I kind of got the vision for writing a book, but I knew I needed to blog first. Basically, asked the question, “How I do even know what to do next? How do I do this if I’m going to write a book?”

So, I started doing a research and I found out I needed to blog first, so I started blogging. I tried to start an email list that sort of thing in 2014. By 2016… you know well because you edited my book and guided me along that journey. In August of 2016, we released Unfrozen. And then in spring of 2017 is when we started the podcast. And that was really when the vision for doing something more than an online business but also really starting to put myself out there in a bigger way, in corporate, was kind of when that was born.

Rosanne: Okay, so as someone’s hearing all of that, they may be thinking, “Wow, that feels overwhelming,” but you didn’t do that all at once. You did it in pieces. What kind of mindset and what kind of skill sets are needed for someone who’s wanting to develop a vision, who has an idea, who wants to expand their voice of influence? What do they need? What are the pieces do they need?

Andrea: Okay, I think that’s a really good designation, mindset and skill set. The first thing that someone needs to do is look at their mindset in terms of, “Do they really believe that they are called?” Do you feel called – that this is a big enough deal that you’re willing to put yourself on the line for this mission, whatever the mission might be? I would say that I didn’t know what my mission was. I felt like I was supposed to have a voice of influence; I didn’t call it that at the time. I felt like I was supposed to have that, but I didn’t know what the mission actually was.

So, whether you actually defined that yet for yourself or you just feel called, if you will, “into the unknown” as Elsa would experience in Frozen 2, you don’t even know what’s out there. You just hear the calling. If you’re feeling that way, then you need to decide now that you’re willing to do what it takes to get to the end. Because if you start there with a determination that you’re not going to let just every little, I guess, like speed bump and blockade in the road keep you from getting to that end goal, if you decide that now then that is going to benefit you throughout the whole long road ahead.

Because it is a long road, and you kind of have to say to yourself, “I am willing to play the long game. This is a big enough deal. I feel called. I’m willing to play the long game whatever gets in my path, I will navigate it. We will figure it out.” And so, I think mindset for sure when you get started. That’s a very important one.

Rosanne: The difference between a dream and a goal is intentionality – it sounds like you’re saying – and perseverance because dreams don’t just come true. They are created through hard work.

Andrea: Yeah. I think it’s a really good distinction because a dream is sort of something that would fulfill you – and that’s not bad to be fulfilled – but a goal and being intentional about a goal that is mission-oriented is way different than having a dream. There’s a whole another level of intentionality and purpose and drive that comes with that than it is to just simply have a dream thinking that, you know, “It would be fun or it would be nice if…” No, no, that’s sort of setting yourself up for a failure.

Rosanne: Yeah, and I’ve heard people coming to the end of their life often look back with regret, not over with the things that they did as much as what they didn’t do. And that’s what kind of what you’re talking about. They can’t just assume that it will come to pass because they wished it. There needs to be an actual movement.

Andrea: Rosanne, I’m really glad that you brought that up because that was actually a really big piece of my story. My mom – when she was in her late fifties, I started really noticing that she was having memory issues. And I knew that she was headed down a path that was going to be very difficult. And eventually, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and when that happened, I was in my mid-thirties. And I thought to myself, “Oh my goodness, what if…” I’m not determining that I’m going to get Alzheimer’s or anything, but I think we can take moments like that and say to ourselves, “What if that were me? If that were me in twenty years, I’ve only got twenty years. If I’m here for something, if I’m supposed to have some sort of impact in the world, I got to get on it because…”

Rosanne: You were no longer just assuming that you’d have time.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, all of a sudden, my mortality – you know, because of my mom’s situation – my own mortality was sort of in my face. And I realized that, “Oh my gosh, I don’t have time to worry about what other people think anymore.” And that was really significant. I think that if we could each do that… you know, maybe you’ve had somebody that you’ve lost. And I’m talking to you, listener, right now. Maybe you had somebody that you’ve lost. Maybe you have seen somebody else go through tragedy – you don’t have to personally go to tragedy to let that impact you.

You can look at that and say, “Oh my gosh, what if that were me,” and allow yourself to imagine it. I know that Gary Vaynerchuk is somebody that I have paid pretty close attention to over the years. He’s an entrepreneur. He’s had a lot of success, like really a lot of success. If you haven’t heard of him, go look him up. You will quickly find out. But what he often does is he pictures tragedy happening in his life so that he can sort of be grounded in why he’s still doing what he’s doing and how blessed he is that he has the opportunity today.

And I think that that is exactly what happened to me. I was like “Oh my gosh the opportunity is now. I just can’t keep putting it out there in terms of, ‘Well, someday maybe somebody will pick me to write this book or to speak at this thing.’” I mean, all of a sudden, I was like, “No, if you feel called, you have to go do the work. You have to put yourself out there to do the work.”

Rosanne: That’s a good point; that things don’t just come to us, that we have to be a part of actively moving toward what we’re called to. So, if a person has that mindset, if they’re recognizing that they’re ready and they’re willing to engage, what skills are they going to need?

Andrea: Well, I think it just depends on where you’re at in the moment. So, if you are feeling like you really want to write a book, then you need to start researching how to write a book. And I think that the tendency that I’ve seen in people who think that they want to do something, but then they don’t end up doing it… The tendency for them is to invest only so far and to sort of dabble on it for a little while and never really truly commit.

Something that my husband and I decided early on was that we were going put our, like, actual finances on the line to invest in things like coaching or invest in a course that would help me to know how to put a book on Amazon, how to sell a book. So, those were different things that kind of came up for me at the time. What’s the next thing that I need to know? I remember the very first course I bought was an online course from Michael Hyatt, and it was about getting your book published.

So, I listened to that full course and I realized, “Oh my gosh, I need a build an email list because publishers aren’t going to be interested in my book unless I have a really big email list, like tens of thousands of people.” And then to me, that made it sound like, “Okay, I’m not gonna be able to do that right away.” That seemed daunting to me. So, I decided immediately to write a book and self-publish it because I knew I wouldn’t be able to build an email list that quickly, as quickly as I wanted to for this particular book that I wanted to write. So then I said to myself, “Okay, what’s the next thing I wanted to learn?”

Rosanne: So, you were saying that for a traditional publisher that was what you would need was the big email list, the platform already built. Is that why you chose to self-publish?

Andrea: Right, and there were other options. Now, there are increasing amount of options. So, big publishers also have a division in their company where it’s essentially self-publishing with a name or an arm of their division kind of tied to it. Sometimes you pay a fee in order to get the coaching that you need or in order to have the book published so it can actually go into stores and that sort of thing, but you don’t have all of the support of a publisher to do that. So, there are a lot of different options for how you can get a book published or publish it yourself. And what I knew at that time was that I was going to go the self-publishing route.

Rosanne: So then what’s next?

Andrea: So, the next thing I decided to do was to look up, “Okay, how do I self-publish the book?” And I found Self Publishing School with Chandler Bolt and invested in that. We invested in that. And when I started that, I had one vision in mind for where I wanted to go with this book, and then I brought you on board. I think I want to talk briefly about how you got involved with Unfrozen, because I asked you to edit. I said, “Here’s about 30,000 words,” or I don’t know what I had and I was like, “Would you edit this for me?” Do you remember what it was like when I asked you that question?

Rosanne: I do. I do. Yes, because basically, you had gotten your first draft done. And it was such a relief, it was an accomplishment, but it was a first draft. So it was kind of your first brain dump on paper, and when you asked me to get involved, I thought ,“How do I both encourage you but also kind of set your sights on what we’re going to need to do – what the process is going to need to look like?” Because you were just like, “Huh, first draft done; let’s publish a book.” And I was like, “Um, actually the work has just begun.” But I couldn’t say that. Do you remember the analogy I used? What I said was, “This is kind of like you just peed on the stick and found out you’re pregnant, and you’ve got a baby, and it’s awesome, and it’s wonderful, and it is so precious and valuable; but we’ve got to give it some time to grow.”

Andrea: Yes, develop it. Yeah, yeah, before it can be birthed into the world. One thing that I want you, the listener, to know is that by bringing Rosanne on board, I really leveled up my game. It went from being something that I was just going to throw out there to being something that would be significant and have significance, both for my voice and my brand and all of that as well as for the reader.

And the reason why I asked Rosanne to help with it was because I knew that she was a good editor. She and I had taken a course together, so we had a lot of the same teachings in our minds, and I knew that she would understand my perspective. So, I trusted her, but then I also knew that she was good at what she did. And I’d given her an article previously to edit for me because I was submitting it to an online publication, and she had done that. And working with her went really well, and I was really pleased with the outcome.

And so, I knew that she both had the skills but then also had the heart and the same perspective in order to help me really level this up and that’s exactly what happened. So, I think that the big lesson, I hope that you as a listener hear from this, is whether it’s a book or whatever it might be that you’re interested in putting out there, bring people alongside you who believe in you but are also really good at what they do to help you level up your game.

Rosanne: And I think one of the things I offered you was you had so many good ideas. You had so much to say and you have so many good ideas. But for the purpose of the book, we needed to figure out, “Where do we narrow things and put our energy so that the reader can actually digest the core message of what this project needs to look like?” And I think so often with creative people – this is true for all of us, because you do the same thing for me, you know, I’ll have ideas and you act as my editor or my sounding board or whatever and you help focus – what is the core message for this project so that it’s useful to the reader or to the listener, instead of just kind of being like a scattershot that doesn’t really have the impact that we want it to have.

Andrea: Absolutely. I think, Rosanne, that’s what we do for companies too, you know.

Rosanne: It is.

Andrea: Like, when we come in and work with an executive, they have a change initiative that they’re trying to accomplish, or they’re wanting their teams to be more effective with customers or clients and developing those relationships. Oh, my goodness, it’s not that they don’t know what to do ever; it’s that there are so much on their plates that they are having hard time being able to narrow down, make decisions, think strategically, all that kind of thing. And that’s why we need other people involved in our projects, involved in our lives.

Rosanne: Right. And we lived with ideas in our own heads so much that we don’t always see the holes in how we’re communicating them. And so it takes somebody else going, “I’m not really sure what you mean there,” for us to realize, “Oh, that totally makes sense to me because I’ve been living with it for six months in my head, but I need to find a way to articulate that so that somebody who hasn’t been living with it for six months in their head can understand and get on board and see the value of it.”

And we do that. Andrea does a great job with that with companies that we work with all the time.

Andrea: Yeah, a couple of analogies that I’ve heard over the years are, “It’s pretty hard to read the label when you are inside of the bottle.” So that would be Donald Miller. And then, of course, you’ve probably heard this one before, which is, “Even the sharpest knife can’t sharpen its own blade.” I don’t know. Anyway, you actually have to have another knife there to sharpen the blade is the point. I think the other thing that really shifted for me and the trajectory of my path in bringing you on board was that I sort of submitted it to this bigger vision. Instead of saying I need to be right and I need to do what I wanted to do and utilize my own perspective to get me there, I said “Rosanne, this is the vision.”

And then we connected there. I have my hands on the air together up at the top, and that’s what I’m physically doing with my body right now – you know, hands on either side of me and then going up and then meeting in the middle. That’s where we could meet was at the level of vision. Then you’re saying to me, “Andrea, in order to get that vision, the path that you’re trying to take is not gonna get you there.” And so you could see something greater. You could see how that vision could actually come to play if we really created something beautiful and significant with that book, and that’s what we did.

And so, I think that that again for you, the listener, who is saying to yourself, “I want to create something.” You can go with your own vision and you can create your own path, but I would suggest that you actually submit to that bigger picture, that bigger vision, and that bigger mission. Because if you do that on a regular basis and you give other people the opportunity to give you input and to actually have an impact on the trajectory of where you’re headed then it changes everything and it allows you to realize that that’s not about you. It’s about your mission.

And the more that you do that and put yourself in that position to be able to take in advice, to take in perspectives… I hesitate to say that because I shouldn’t say the more that you do that, but if you do that in a way that allows you to sort of submit to that bigger vision, it’s going to make a huge difference in your trajectory.

Rosanne: I think that’s true. And for you, one of the interesting parts of your journey – and I think this probably true for a lot of people – you were initially going to bring insight. You were going to share insight. And when I read your manuscript, I realized, “This is not just insight; like you can’t produce it in a vacuum.” Like you, what your journey has been, how you gained this insight has so much more weight than if you just tossed the ideas out there.

Andrea: That’s right.

Rosanne: And so another thing that can happen when you have another person’s perspective is you may be selling yourself cheap; like you may have your idea that you want to share and you’re kind of timid about it. Our listeners may be feeling like, “I don’t know if other people will see the value in this. I’m really excited. I can’t really seem to get traction.” Part of that may be because, like, there’s a substance to you that you have to put out there – you have to be willing to be open and not protect yourself from bringing that part of you to the front to carry the weight of that idea forward.

And so having somebody else who can see the substance that’s in you and say, “Don’t sell yourself short, you have something to say. It’s important – people need to hear it. There something of value here for the world,” can really take things to a different level.

Andrea: And you know, Rosanne, I think even just fast-forwarding to when you came on board with Voice of Influence on a more regular basis… a lot of people who are entrepreneurs, they hire assistance to be able to take care of the little things. And my very first hire with Voice of Influence was you. I mean, there were some things like obviously getting this podcast out there. I work with somebody as a contractor to Britany Felix who does the editing, and then have somebody who works on the transcript – Cecilia – and then your daughter helps us out as well. You know, there are things that I did get help with immediately that I knew if I could give those to somebody else, they would be taken care of well, and then I could focus my time someplace else.

But the reason why I wanted you to come on board very quickly and early on is because I knew that you would bring that other perspective that would really further our vision or our mission in a way that would be significant. So that’s the reason why I wanted you to be that first person to bring on board as an employee essentially or a teammate in this journey because I see you as a strategic value to our company, and to me personally.

Rosanne: I have certainly enjoyed the process and working with you has been a unique experience for me because you really do – I’ve said this before, but it’s not flattery, it’s the truth and it’s something I really appreciate – you practice the culture that you teach. You do value the voices of others, and so that makes a really fun, fulfilling experience to work with you and for you. So, I appreciate that as well. Are there other skill sets that a person… that you want to bring out? We can chat forever.

Andrea: I know, I know we could. Yeah. So, if we were to go back, then… So, I think that we really covered a lot of the mindset stuff. That’s really important, and there’s always mindset stuff as you go. I think it’s important to take in those voices that are positive that are going to help you and encourage you along your path. So, that might be through podcasts. If you’re listening to this one, my guess is you like listening to podcasts; and there a lot of them out there that would be very helpful and that could give both mindset help as an encouragement as well as, you know, help with the actual skills that you need to get you where you want to go.

So, take in as much as you can. If you’re really a reader, then go for the blog post and for the transcripts. If you love listening to things… and for the books, the actual physical books where you get to read. I’m more of a listener and so I’d prefer to listen to podcasts. We listen to audio books all the time, and that’s how I do my reading, and that’s how I take in my information or I watch videos. So, take in all those voices and all the advice that you can to help you continue down that path of having a positive mindset and understanding how to embrace this journey that you’re on.

Then when we look at the skill set, every step of the way, there’s a next thing that I needed to learn. It was a little overwhelming at first. When people ask me now, “What should I do? What’s the easiest way to put up a website?” That just feels so overwhelming to folks. The thing that I had been told and that we still do… I don’t really know the best advice is on this currently. You would want to talk to or listen to somebody else that deals with this all the time, but what I did is I created a WordPress.org blog.

So, WordPress.org allows you to own your own website, which is super important. If you want WordPress.com, it’s free. That’s fine, but you don’t own your own site. And to own your own real estate online is super important. So, to have a WordPress.org website or something similar that would allow you to blog or to share videos or podcast episodes.

And then after you kind of got a website kind of figured out, you’ve got to decide which social media channels you’re going to focus on. I suggest choosing one or two just to start out with and start posting your thoughts – putting yourself out there little by little or maybe you’re somebody who likes to jump in headfirst; that’s great. I used canva.com to create images. They have lots of pictures that you can use, and they have tutorials on how to create images or video sometimes that sort of thing.

But anyway, they’re free unless you need to go deeper into their services, but Canva is a great place to learn how to do those images and to create those. And then put them on your website or put them on social media, and start putting yourself out there. You can do it on your personal page or you can create, like for Facebook, you can create a public page that is for your new brand.

And so that’s what I did. I started Andrea Joy Wenburg public page. And at the time, Facebook was at a perfect time to be able to share post and get a following and that sort of thing. It’s a little more complicated now. You should probably just follow somebody or talk to somebody who knows a lot more about the landscape of social media right now.

One the people that I would recommend following would be April Beach. She has the SweetLife podcast. And so if you’re interested in doing an online business, she is the perfect person to listen to for that. And she is kind of a little bit of a rebel, and she’ll push you out of your comfort zone in a good way. But I’ve had her here on this podcast before. So, she can give you a lot more of that kind of technical details.

But essentially, you want to find out what the next thing is that you need. You need to figure out what it is that you need, and then go find it and figure out how to do it.

Rosanne: That’s one of the nice things about the internet, isn’t it? It can be overwhelming at times to sort through all of the options, but there is a lot of information available now and even videos that will walk you through a process of how to set things up or things like that.

Andrea: That’s right. And you know, I’m a big advocate for also asking for help. That might mean that you need to pay for help. And one of the things that I learned early on was that if I pay for a little bit, I’m going to get a really cheap product. I’m going to get not a lot of help. And if I invest more into something, it’s more likely that I’m going to get a lot of out it. And so, you have to kind of decide what can you do, what are you willing to do. A lot of people want a nickel and dime starting a business.

If you thought about starting a business in your local community, you would need a building. You would need a way to payroll. You’d need an accountant. You’d need all these things you need. You’d need so many things. If you have a viable business idea, you’d go and you’d get a bank loan and you would start a business based with that. It’s not that you need to go get a bank loan to have a message out into the world, but just take that perspective a little bit. Like, if you’re running to build something significant, you might have to invest significantly. So that’s something to keep in mind.

Rosanne: How important is a business plan in this? Was that a part of what you did?

Andrea: Eventually, yes and initially, no. Initially, it was just about getting the message out. But then I started to realize that it was going to take a lot to get the message out, that I was going to need to learn a lot, and I was going to need strategy and things that didn’t come easily or quickly or cheaply. And so then it became, “Oh, I need to actually…this has to be sustainable. Somehow or another, this has to be self-sustaining. I can’t just dump a bunch of money in here and not be able to, you know, it’s not like our family charity.” I think it could be if you decide for it to be.

But for us, we wanted it to grow. We wanted it to be much, much bigger than what we could, you know, do as a family charity. So, we had to decide that we were going to invest so that we could also make money, so that it could become a self-sustaining situation. And then eventually, we decided, “You know what, we actually don’t want to just be self-sustaining. This needs to be a viable business because we want to actually hire people to be a part of it and we want to be able to give back out of the business. We want to be that big. We want to be significant and that kind of way too.”

So, what was your initial question that you just asked me, Rosanne? I feel like I got off onto a tangent.

Rosanne: No, you did fine. You did fine. I’m trying to remember what I asked. Business plan – that was what I asked.

Andrea: Oh yeah, yeah. So, if you’re looking at starting something, instead of focusing on a business plan, I think you need to start with brand strategy. And that we’ve talked a lot about a lot on this podcast already. And that has to do with knowing what your mission is, your purpose, your message; and then how you’re going to go about getting it out into the world. And that kind of work – we’ve done a lot of work with folks on that, and we can help you with that too.

Rosanne: That’s one question that we get a fair amount, isn’t it? How to choose whether or not to have a personal brand, or a more mission or company-oriented brand. Do you want to address that, just briefly?

Andrea: Sure. So, basically, I suggest to everybody that they have a personal brand anyway, because whatever you create as your personal brand is always yours. And it will be yours forever. So, it’s super important to build something that is true to who you are so that it can stick with you, and it doesn’t have to shift greatly. And what am I doing has changed a lot over the past six years but my personal brand – I’ve felt a little bit of an identity crisis with that over the years too. But I’m kind of coming back to a point where I’m like, “This is actually really consistent throughout the whole time since I started intentionally creating this personal brand.” And though Voice of Influence is its own brand, I’m sort of the face of that brand.

And so when you’re thinking about that – if you’re wanting to have like a company where there are more people involved or you’re wanting it bigger than yourself – then it’s great to have a brand name like Voice of Influence that is bigger than yourself. But somebody is going to have to be the face of that brand for it to really resonate online. That’s my personal opinion about that. I’m sure that you can find examples where that’s not the case, but they’re rare. And it’s just way easier for people to connect with a brand when there’s a personality, when there’s a person involved unless you’re really, really big company and you can create Baby Nut. Those of you who don’t know that’s the new Planters peanut icon, and Baby Nut has its own Twitter feed. It’s really fascinating. You should go check that out. You can do that. You could try that, but it’s really hard. It’s really hard, and it’s expensive to try to compete with the big brands in that way.

Rosanne: So, as we kind of pull all this together, I think you’ve given some great information and a great response to the questions that we’ve gotten. I’m just curious, as you look back on your own journey – the process, the things that you’ve learned along the way – is there anything you wish you had known at the outset or anything you wished you’ve done differently? What changes might you have made?

Andrea: I think that if there were something that I would go back and tell myself, it would be that, “You know way more than you think.” There’s so many times that people would ask me questions about what I thought about things or what I wanted to do, and I don’t know. I don’t know and I would say, “I don’t know,” all the time. And when I would get into a situation where I wanted help with something and I did maybe hire somebody to help me with strategy or, you know, something along those lines…

Other than you so, I’m not talking about you in this case, Rosanne. If you go in front of a guru kind of a person, they love to be able to have answers for people right off the top of their head. They love to be able to share their really great ideas with you, and then assume that you’re going to and apply them and assume that they’re going to work for you.

But what I found is that that’s not always the case. And I personally get really frustrated when I’m not heard – when I feel like the person that I’ve hired to help me with something has not taken the time, and I guess, humility to sit back, and listen enough and long enough to understand where I’m really coming from, and in order to be able to offer an idea or offer advice that would be super helpful and would apply to me.

Rosanne: That’s so important on so many levels, isn’t it? When we feel like someone’s trying to fix something that’s not what’s broken or tweak something that that’s not what we came for. That importance of hearing and understanding what’s really needed is so valuable.

Andrea: Yeah. And I think that one of the things I’ve seen in other people is they spend a lot of money to go work with a guru or to go work with a really good strategist, but they don’t already know what they want. They go into it not knowing what they really want. And so they haven’t communicated clearly what they’re trying to get to. And so the person who’s trying to help them gives them the answer to the question that they’ve asked or they give them the strategy that’s going to get them to the place where they said they want to go, but that’s not actually where they wanted to go in the first place.

So, I think that if you’re starting out, that is what you want to get clear on from the get-go is what you actually want – what do you actually want to accomplish because there are plenty of people out there who can tell you how to start a podcast. Do you want to start a podcast? You know, there are plenty of people out there who could tell you how to build a business based on coaching. Do you really want to be a coach? There are plenty of people who could tell you how to build a business where you can end up with maybe fifteen people on your team – a really big business, but is that a kind of business that you actually want? Or do you want to just have a personal brand kind of business?

So, I think getting to the core of what you actually want is incredibly important and to keep checking in with that, keep going back and asking yourself, “What do I really want here?” And before you work with somebody, before you spend money on working with somebody, ask that question, you know, “What do I actually want to accomplish?” And if you’re not sure of that answer, you should hire somebody to help you figure that out or even just keep asking. Have somebody else there that you know that you can trust who can keep asking you the question, “Okay, is that what you really want?”

And if you can have that voice that’s going to help you discern that as you go, it’s going to help you to make decisions more quickly and to gather the advice that you actually need to get you where you want to go.

Rosanne: So you need clarity on your vision or your mission before you can get clarity on the path to take to get there.

Andrea: Absolutely, yes. Which is why we have spent a lot of time here talking about – on the podcast – talking about personal brand strategy because that is such a big piece of knowing how to get to where you want to go.

Rosanne: Thank you, Andrea. That is so good. As we wrap this up, is there anything else you want to tell our listeners? Anything else that comes to mind that you want to leave them with?

Andrea: If your message is that important, then it’s worth batting out to figure out what it is. It’s worth wading through the chaos and just trying to figure out what the next thing is. It’s worth the effort. And if it’s not worth the effort to you, then it’s probably… you know, if you look at that long road ahead and you’re like, “I don’t know if it’s worth all that,” then I would question whether it’s worth trying in the first place. There might be a different way for you to have purpose in this world then to feel like you need to, you know, have a podcast and a book or speak or whatever it might be. Get clear on what it is that you actually want and what’s actually worth paying the price for and then go do it

Rosanne: Thank you so much, Andrea. And if today’s discussion has sparked interest in getting Andrea’s help with brand strategy or building a team that has clarity of vision and mission, get in touch with us at voiceofinfluence.net. We would love to be able to work with you.

Andrea: Thank you so much, Rosanne.

Voice of Influence

Message-Driven Leadership

How I Got Started with a Brand Online

Episode 135

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