Every time I think I have seen all the great TED talks, I stumble upon another one. They all share similar hope and inspiration about the present or future… but each packaged in their own way to share their knowledge just the way I need to hear it.

Simon Sinek’s TED talk from 2010 shares “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”. He talked about how people don’t buy WHAT you do… but instead, they buy WHY you do it.

Those of you thinking about starting a business or are already innovators, this video is a must see. It is important if you want to create a supreme business culture for your employees but also if you want to attract loyal clients.

I have written many times about your unique brilliance and how you share what you do, but Simon takes it further to share how you deliver what you do is important. Inspired leaders and great organizations think and communicate from the inside out.

It’s not always about the facts, figures, or benefits of the services or products that we offer. It is about the why.

Once you are done this video, please share with me on Twitter or even below in the comments: Why do you do what you do? What do you believe?

If you are like many heart centered solopreneurs looking to make a difference in the world, you know you need to get noticed in order to make your mark matter. So how do you get someone to do business with you? Or should the question actually be, why should they choose you over someone else?

Many years back, I picked up a book called Jump Start Your Business Brain and heard the term Unique Selling Proposition by Doug Hall. This book became my little “bible” to marketing.

It was full of nuggets of getting me and business noticed in what I thought was a flooded market. One of the biggest points Hall writes about is to discover your Unique Selling Propositions (USP).  You do this by logically uncovering the points that differentiate you from your competition. Sounds logical enough.

There is definitely a place for the logical thinking process, but when I became more of a heart centered solopreneur, I soon realized that in a world of abundance, there is no competition when you are following your purpose. You were meant to be living your purpose, no matter what.

Customers and clients connect with you not when you are illustrating the differences between you and your competition. You will attract more clients you are meant to work with when you allow who you are authentically to shine through.

So the answer actually lies in your heart, not in your head. It is not your logical USP that will captivate the hearts of your clients, but your unique brilliance that you need to discover that is fundamental to branding and marketing success.

Find your unique brilliance and let it shine from inside out.

As a solopreneur, having a brand that is authentic to who you are and that magnetically attracts customers to you with ease and grace is key to building a lucrative business (that can make a difference).  I love bringing my clients through developing their own personal brand.  Figuring a way to put your “personality” into you brand and your business right now is the key. Here are some tips on how to do this right away:

1. Don’t hide out- Often times when solopreneurs go into business, they try to hide certain parts of their personality. What part of your personality do you most often try to hide. You need to pinpoint and pulling back the covers on whatever you have been hiding to have more brand authenticity.  The little idiosyncrasies  that we think we should hide, make us lovable, unique and stand out. Bring that to the forefront and let the real you shine.

2.List the emotions you evoke - Brainstorming a list of words that represent who you are and the feeling you evoke in others will get you closer to the brand you want to relay to your customers. Perhaps talking to previous clients or friends or family and see what words come to mind when they think of you. Doing a 360 degree evaluation can help with this if you find this process difficult.

3.Let it all hang out – If you think about all the ways your customers or potential customers will be in contact with you, that’s where you need to showcase who you are authentically. So “let it all hang out” and let your personality show in your ezines, next email, websites, marketing materials. This is scary to be so raw, but that is really the secret sauce of brand authenticity… being exactly who you are and making no apologies for it. The customers that are meant to work with you will… and the ones that don’t, we never meant to.

PS. Contact me if you want to figure a way to use a  highly creative yet structured way to expedite this process and have a brand that is authentic to who you are.

Often times when people think about a brand the first thing that comes to mind is the company logo, the colors or perhaps the tagline. Although those are pieces to the brand, it is NOT what a brand is. You need to not only have a mental image (logo, colors, tagline) but also a heartfelt emotional image. After all, your brand is the promise of the experience your clients get when they work with you or buy your products. There are many secrets to building a brand, but here are 3 to start you off:

1. Unique Brilliance – You must know what you are an expert in. This of course starts with knowing what is your unique brilliance (check out the blog for more articles on Unique Brilliance soon). With this key piece you will be able to figure out and communicate why you are different and unique and why someone should do business with you over anybody else. From there, you can uncover your specific expertise.

One thing I need to mention in this is that this is NOT your credentials, qualifications or your degree. You can have the same qualifications as someone else, but there will be a uniqueness and a natural “way” you deliver your service or sell your product over the someone with the same qualifications.Your expertise is tied into that uniqueness… so figure out your unique brilliance.

2. Brand identity – You must know what your brand identity looks and feels like. Now I said in the beginning that your brand is not your logo or your tagline. However, when you use these visual and external elements and combine it with the emotions you stir up in your potential clients, you end up creating a distinctive and memorable brand that is uniquely you. This becomes your Brand Identity. Your brand identity includes those emotions that should be included in your sales copy, brochures, websites and so on.

3. Brand Promise – Figure out why you are in business and what results you promise to deliver. Asking yourself what is your purpose or why did you go into business in the first place is essential to creating a solid brand. Decide what you are a stand for and what your clients can always depend on if they engage in your service (or buy your products). This is what a brand promise is all about. You will end up attracting more of your ideal clients when you have a message that is clear and resonates with them.

Having an authentic client attracting brand will help you not just survive as an solopreneur but thrive. If you are ready to get into action, I would love to talk to you about building your personal brand today.

Because a brand is essentially showcasing who you are authentically, it only makes sense to use a system that is client centered to put together your personal brand. Contact me today.

No matter what business you are in and no matter whether you like marketing or not, marketing mastery is one of the strongest pillars that will hold up your business. To make your marketing easier so that you can fall in love with promoting your business, there are 3 keys to spicing up that secret sauce of your marketing.

1. Pick your people and refine your niche. Have a niche that is refined and narrow will mean that you aren’t trying to figure out how to market to the world. Once you have a refined niche, it means you know where you can find your group of customers, what problem they want to get solved and whether they are willing to pay you handsomely for it. Without “picking your people”, you will be more like than not, to be spinning your wheels or worse, wasting your marketing dollars.

2. Construct a clear message - Your customers need to know what you stand for, what problem that you solve and how you can help them. Making sure your message is clear means that you will have more ease relaying that to potential customers (and even existing ones as well).

3. Take what is in your head and heart and put it on the table – Often times we are the ones stopping ourselves from showcasing our brilliance. We have amazing conversations in our own heads about how great our products or services are for our customers. We know that in our hearts that our companies will change the world. But when it comes time to showcase what we have to offer, we don’t have the language to best present what is in our heads and hearts.  Furthermore you end up confusing and actually overwhelm your clients because of the scattered way you present what you have. The good news is that the psychology of marketing and sales is a teachable skill.

Brand awareness happens when your customers recognize and associate your service/products with your brand. So how do you raise your online profile and get more brand awareness as a solopreneur?

Now with technology and social media there are a number of ways you can market and also a number of places you want to be online.

There is no doubt that you want to be searchable for your expertise or for what you want your brand to be known for on Google, Facebook and You Tube. These 3 sites are still the forerunners for where people are looking first online. How do you get more brand awareness via these sites? Here are 4 ways you can start:

1. Blog Posts – Blogging is an oldie but a goodie. I am currently doing a Blog competition for 30 days. Being a part of this competition, people are sharing my blog posts with their friends and passing along the information. Whenever you write a blog post, you are showcasing your expertise. But also, you are allowing (through properly researched keywords) search engines like google, yahoo and msn to find you and share you with even more people looking for what you have to offer.

2. Article marketing - Similar to blog posts, article marketing is key to have a great online profile. All article marketing means is writing articles and instead of posting them on your blog, you post them on other Article submission sites. When you submit articles to Article sites like ezinearticles.com you again are recognized as an expert in your field, but you are also giving more touch points online for customers to find your site and hopefully connect with you back to your own site.

3. Video Marketing - Video marketing is probably the fastest growing way to grow your online profile. Because the world wide web is so large, video is becoming the best way for potential prospects and clients to get to know, like, and trust you quickly via the connection they build on the internet.  Videos rank very well via search engines. When your videos are tagged with certain keywords it is more likely to have people searching for what you have to offer. A video is the next best thing to having you sit directly across from your client to share who you are and how your products/services can help.

4. Word of mouth referring and social proofing via all social media platforms. Although technology is a wonderful way to build a business… we are all still human. When a friend or a co-worker recommends a service or product, you are more likely to sit up and listen because of your emotional and friend connection vs. seeing an ad and taking action on your own. This is social proofing. Having people share your content (be it video, articles, blog posts or just your thoughts) with people they know, means that you now have a higher chance in getting more traction and increasing your online marketing profile. It is now easier than ever to have your followers re-tweet on twitter, or share your content with their list on facebook.

I would love to hear your thoughts. And how can I end this article without asking you to tweet or Facebook about this article.

The less is more philosophy really comes into play when you begin to find a niche for your business. Many business owners have a fear of closing doors when they are told to “find their niche”. Why would you want to narrow down the types of clients you attract? And even if you did, how do you really narrow it to just those types of clients?

I know for me, once I narrowed down that I wanted to work with passionate and purpose driven entrepreneurs that wanted to take action and see results now, I was able to wade through the sea of clients I no longer wanted to attract into my business.

When you are new in business, you may think, “I need to just get business in the door, regardless of whether they are a perfect fit”. WRONG. I used to want to help everyone. However, you will soon discover, that a) not everyone wants your help  b) that the clients that don’t fit the criteria of your niche, are probably also the same clients that will drain a lot of your time and energy.

So, what can you do to ensure you are working with the right clients from the beginning? And when I say the RIGHT clients, I mean the ones who love what you have to offer, love the way you offer it and are willing to pay you handsomely for doing what you love to do.

1.Whenever you market, always market to the highest version of your IDEAL client. When you do, you will end up attracting exactly that. For the longest time as a small business owner, I felt like I was “closing” off my market if I marketed to a single niche. But, you in fact end up attracting more of the clients that you like, which also means you will do what you love for longer. There is nothing that slows the momentum of a business (and the stamina of a solopreneur) like working with clients you don’t like.

2.Increase your fees. Obviously it isn’t as simple as just bumping up the numbers if you already have a lot of serious clients that fit your niche. You want to take the time to think about the transitional conversation and also how to position the new changes in your business. Constructing the conversation so that my clients are finally able to charge what they are worth is one of my passions.

Many people charge what their industry dictates instead of what their true value is to their client. Then they wonder why they are burnt out, under appreciated and under paid. By figuring out, what your value is to your clients, you are able to then increase your fees and attract more clients that are meant to work with you.

3. Stand in your power and claim your own authority. I heard an amazing speech by Pam Slim at the Wealthy Thought Leader a few weeks ago about this exact topic. You need to define the terms of leadership in what you are passionate about doing. What she said was that you either claim your authority or you don’t. It has nothing to do with experience, blog rank, number of followers, race or even ability. We often wait and look at experts to tell us we are experts. When really, you either claim your authority or not. And when you do claim your authority and are willing to stand in your power, you will end up attracting the niche of clients and followers that are meant to work with you and who see you as the expert in what you do.

So, what does it mean when you actually have a niche in your business? Firstly it means you are saving money marketing to the right people. Secondly, you are making more money because both you and your clients see your value. And lastly, you become the architect to your expert status and have clients that experience the gift you are meant to share. So, what are you waiting for?

I have been away for over a week now. While waiting for my connecting flight from Phoenix to Vancouver, I wandered into a Starbucks. As soon as I did, it felt as comforting as home. I am not even a big coffee drinker. However, the smells, sounds and feel of the place felt familiar.  And familiar is comforting! You know what to expect… Ah, branding at its best.

The smell of the coffee brewing, the soothing jazz music playing, the sounds of the espresso machines whistling and the friendly, quick moving baristas waiting to take your order. In fact, even their customers are their brand… no matter which Starbucks you enter, there always seems to be that person asking for the long winded 7 worded coffee drink and then the one just wanting an Americano with “a little room on the top”.

When I watch a company like Starbucks, I can’t help but take my hat-off to their mastery.

So, how does a solopreneur compete with companies and corporations with million dollar systems and teams to help them brand? Well, a brand is not about a logo, not even about your tag line… but instead, it is about a feeling that your customers feel when they think of your company.

So how can you come up with that, especially if your brand is you? You are the service, you are the first line your customers see? How do you get your customers to have a deep emotional experience and connection to who you are authentically?

Well, the reason I am even in this airport is because I just spend the last 4 amazing days with Million Dollar Money and Marketing Coach Kendall Summerhawk.  I am becoming one of her Certified Money Marketing and Soul Coaches.

I am coming back finally with a system that can help entrepreneurs figure out their Brand Archetype.  Their Brand what??? Sound too ‘out there’ for you? Please, keep reading…

By figuring out your Brand Archetype, it ensures that your brand is a deeply emotional experience for others and also a highly authentic experience for you.

In other words, you can create the connection between you and your customer so that they really ‘get’ who you are authentically. You can evoke the feelings and connect in a way that is authentically you.  You can grow your business based on your strengths and what you already radiate to the world.

Believe me, the dilemma of “what is my brand” became crystal clear after I figured out my Brand Archetype. I no longer struggled with the question, “Is this my brand?? Or is this my brand?” And best of all, it comes from the place that is authentically you (Check out my article… Transforming my Brand.)

I look forward to sharing this amazing transformation of how you can go from the accidental ‘You Brand’ to the ‘You Shining from the Inside Out’ through the Branding with Archetypes System.  Free teleseminar coming up, stay tuned…

I invite you to leave your comments and thoughts below. And sign up, if you haven’t already done so for my free newsletter.

What is your company’s uniqueness? This is a really important part of the equation as you go out to explain what it is that your company creates.

The best way to start is to list all the different features of your product. I think this is the easiest way to get all the juices in your brain flowing and moving. Everyone seems to be able to tell you what their product does, who it is good for, how you can use it.

Once you have come up with that list, throw it out. What?? That’s right, throw it out!

Often times as product creators, we start listing the features of our product as soon as we get an open window to talk about what we sell. Have you ever done that and just had a glazed look over your prospect… or just that polite, “oh really” combined with the token head nodding?

Well, in today’s market when you have literally 15seconds to captivate your prospective customer (or 140 characters…including spaces! If you are on twitter!) listing off what your product does will not engage your prospects.

Instead of throwing your information at someone, you want to be building a relationship and have someone engaged and participating in the conversation with you.

Take the juices that you already have flowing about your company’s uniqueness and features about the product… now,  instead, turn it into a single statement that has your prospect asking more.  

Your statement needs to be bold to perk attention. And if it is in your personality, even a bit sassy too. The reasoning behind this is that you want to engage the customer to ask you questions. Once they ask you questions, they become a part of the conversation instead of just given a sales pitch.

There have been times that my statement doesn’t trigger an expanded conversation. If this happens more times than it does, then perhaps you need to re-visit your statement. Business is organic and you need to always be re-evaluating and changing with what works and what doesn’t.  

But if it only happens some of the time, by forcing a sales pitch and risk sounding like a walking salesman, to someone who is clearly not interested in the conversation, you are just wasting your time.  Let it go! By coming from a mindset of abundance, there are plenty of fish in the sea, you will then be able to build a relationship based on something else you may have in common with the prospect.

So, start brainstorming… starting putting together what your statement is that will captivate and engage your customer!

It is very important question to figure out at the beginning as you need to be able to set the right foot forward as you start to bring your business and your product into the world.