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Branding is a good way to tell your audience or customers what you have to offer, and according to my guest, Emily London Miller, branding is an essential when you have your own business. Tune in to find out how important branding is and what branding is all about.
Welcome back. Today we’re talking about branding. And do you know who this is? We’ve got Emily Linda Miller here. So we’re talking about how important branding is for small business. Okay, so let’s just jump right in with that question. I mean how important is branding for small business? -Well, to me when you say branding, you can be referencing different things. You could be talking about your visual brand. Which is what I think most people mean when they say branding. But in general, the word brand, your brand is everybody’s perception of you as a business. And if you’re a small business owner, that’s… That is your business. -Okay, so yeah. So we’re not just talking about then your logo. -Right, right. But we’re talking about people’s perception of you. -Yeah. So, you know, I definitely want to get into all these different kind of elements especially for a small business owner who’s their brand, right? You are your brand in certain businesses. But for this video, I wanted to be really, really clear on visual brand. Creating a visual brand concept that’s something that you can take then to your team. Basically the people who are making your visuals for you. Whether it’s your website, your graphic designer or, you know, even your wardrobe consultant. -Mm-hmm. Those are you seeing the improvement to my brand will recognize and improvement to my photography, to my website, things Emily hears is responsible for that. Well, let’s let’s first address why is having a powerful visual brand so important? -You know people are going to be making a first impression judgment about you whether you’ve given it any thought or not. And so getting some clarity on how you want to come across. Not just because you’re wanting to fake something. It’s not that at all. It’s more that you’re wanting to get to the core values that you have and want to come through in your business and that you can give people an idea of what to expect when they work with you. What the experience would be like. -Okay, so to be a contrarian what if I think, “Well, I shouldn’t want to… I shouldn’t need to care what other people think.” -I literally have no answer to that because you’re in business. So, by default not… You know, I think it’s kind of funny when people say they’re going to quit their job, fire their boss. When you’re a business owner, your clients are all your bosses. So you end up having a lot of bosses in your life. And so, what they think and how you perform for them really really matters. -Yeah. It matters. It matters 100% -And if you’re doing it right, your brand should give them an idea of who you are and what it’s going to be like to work with you before they even hire you. Which is good for you because then it helps you to be able to deliver exactly what they’re expecting. -Well, I want to throw another twist in this because I’ve experienced as I’ve increased the quality of my photos of increased my brand through wardrobe, it actually has given me a boost of confidence. Just earlier this week, I was in a meeting in Austin where there was a lot of very, very wealthy influencers. You know making millions of dollars a year. And I wasn’t even expecting to go to this meeting. I was just kind of invited and I was wearing the right attire. And I was having conversations and several of them want to hire me. And it’s like, “I’m so glad that I wasn’t just… I don’t know. dressed like I used to dress.” -Well, so what’s interesting about that is yes, definitely self-confidence makes you show up in a bigger grander way. But also the way that you dress or the way that you present yourself, it tells people, it gives them clues about your tastes. And so, if you’ve got a high level of taste, then they know that your work is probably going to reflect that as well. Without even necessarily having to see your work first. And obviously this applies you know, if somebody’s first you know, impression of you is through your website. You want your website to reflect that. If somebody’s first impression of you is how you’re dressed just seeing you across the room, you want that to riff like that. And if your first impression is how you communicate to people when you’re standing in the front of that room and introducing yourself, then the where… Even the words that you speak, the mannerisms that you have, the the way that you show up as maybe really friendly and inviting and warm versus some businesses makes more sense to show up as commanding and strong and powerful and very capable. So, it kind of depends on, you know, your needs in your own brand. So, I thought keeps coming on my mind about how you and I we got working together.
Almost 3 years ago, I saw a friend who a good friend of mine. She had a new profile photo that she posted on Facebook. And I’ve seen lots of different headshots of her. She’s an amazing woman but I saw this photo and I thought that… I thought, “That is Anne? Who took this photo?” And it was obviously, it was Emily. And then I went and I looked at your portfolio. And when… I then, you know, made a decision right there. “I’m going to work with Emily.” Because like when… And when I was ready to up my brand when I was ready to step into a just a stronger role to really help people the way that I’m good at, obviously, went to Emily to up my photography. I mean if there’s a chance of making an improvement on a photography, why wouldn’t you choose the best? So, I want I want to switch gears for a minute to talk about like how you created your brand. -Okay, so kind of to go back maybe 7 years, I was actually working as a graphic designer in a previous business that I had created. And in my role as a graphic designer, I wasn’t… I wasn’t trained in college. So, I didn’t have the training that that says branding is you know giving a feeling about who this business is. And so for me, branding was purely visual. Okay? So, I started my you know foundational elements of building this business. My portrait photography business on just the purely visual aspect of branding. And I.. Looking back have thought about it and part of me wants to say that was maybe a little frivolous or you know, I didn’t have to be as complicated as I made it. But at the same time, I really loved that that was the first step because it gave me a chance to get clarity on how I wanted my brand to look first. And then I switched gears into how I wanted, you my, brand, my persona to feel and how I wanted people to feel when they worked with me. And those conversations kind of built on the visual foundation. -Okay. Because there’s a difference there. If you focus all about the look, how do you want something to look versus the feeling how do you want them to feel, it might completely change the look. -In my case, what… That actually definitely happened. So, what I did when I was trying to curate the idea of what my brand looked like is I went on Pinterest and I just pinned all of the different… I just did searches for a branding or web design or things like that and I pinned everything that I thought was really beautiful or really cool. And what I found is that there was this enormous collection of very not consistent looking content. And so then I went through and said, “Okay, what are the keywords (Visually) that are really important for my brand?” And you know, in my case, I photographed mainly women. And my images have a specific style. Since I’m a visual brand. I mean, what I do. That kind of helped give me some starting points. And so I started by asking myself, you know, “What are my images like and what are, you know, what are the kind of images that I want to create for my clients?” And remember at this point, I’m brand new and so I don’t have tons of clients. And so I get to choose in this moment. Who are the clients I want to work with and how do I want to serve them? Right? So for me, it was like I want to be able to photograph really elegant, timeless, glamorous, super feminine images. That are classic. And so that those words kind of became my visual branding like direction. So then after that, I took those words and I said, “Alright Pinterest, which of these pins that I put in this brand board match those words?” In which totally don’t because I would find that there would be some that were super playful and trendy posts that definitely didn’t fit the bill for timeless. And so those had to go. And then I also kind of got a little more clarity on the color schemes that I wanted. I wanted to be really… Obviously I wanted it to be classic and timeless. And the kind of thing that that’s not all you’re looking at. I didn’t want it to be color based. So I chose colors that are in the images that I photograph. Like skin tones and the colors of the backgrounds that I use in black and white and just keeping it really clean. And so once I got clear on the colors and the keywords then I was able to curate down that Pinterest board to something that was really, really defined. -So, it’s really cool. So that’s a lot of what I do myself and when I work on my clients is to find examples, to search on and find what you like. But it’s so important to follow the steps that you’ve done as well. Really knowing the words, how long how long was that process of kind of choosing the words that represent your brand? -Choosing words was easy. Narrowing them down as the hard part. So I started by just… I would come up with several words and you know, it would be like 50 or something, outrageous. And what I even… Some words, I would go to the thesaurus and add five that are all kind of related to each other. And that gave me a chance to say, “Do you know what? This specific word has everything that I want to communicate. And in this ord allows me to get rid of these many.” You know, all of these other words. So it was kind of an exercise in clarity that was the most valuable aspect of it was probably the opportunity that it gave e to really be… To get that clarity. -So how many words did you narrow it down to? -I narrowed it down to 6 words. -Awesome. -Yeah. -And how long have you had those 6 words? Since the beginning? -Since the beginning and what’s kind of interesting is when I… I started with just those 6 words and then I started going to networking events and I started to feel a little confined by hose words. Not just networking events but also like when I would be posting content on social media. And I found that I really wanted to post content that was emotional and that would connect with people and it was going to kind of give people an insight into my heart and how I wanted to hold space for them and invite them to my studio. And I felt like the words classic, timeless, legant, glamorous kind of hold people at heart arm’s length. They’re beautiful visual words but they’re not great for how I want people to feel around my brand. So that’s why I ended up kind of cultivating another list that was separate from my visual list. So today, I was thinking, “This video would be great to talk about the visual list and that it would be awesome to have another conversation about the next level.” -Alright so what you what you mentioned there’s pretty interesting. And I… Grab that paper because what she has here… She’s got like different visual brands. ou’ve got my brand images are and they’re their words we’ve mentioned timeless, luxurious, elegant glamorous. Let’s talk about this one here though. The “I am.” So you’ve got different words that you’re going to use in different scenarios? Is that… Is that how I’m understanding this? -Yeah. So essentially, my visual brand is how it looks, okay? That’s also kind of the first impression if you were looking at something I was wearing or something from a distance. That’s maybe how you would see me. But at the core of who I am… Like glamorous, elegant, feminine, polish. Like those are
all things that I aspire to be and that I dressed up as. But in reality, you know, people aren’t those things. Those are people words. And so for me, you know, I wanted more than anything to come cross as compassionate and inviting to people. So that when they came into my space that they would feel safe and feel seen and heard and important. -So, there’s obviously a difference there. It would… It would… Those words don’t necessarily represent your photography business brand. Compassionate and inviting. So I see what you’re saying. -Yeah. And honestly, the way that I photographed women, that’s my visual brand. You know, it kind of ties together. Some women I photograph as… Most women actually are very powerful and engaged and deeply connected in their images. And so that’s part of my visual brand absolutely. But then there would also be images where people were super dressed up and really glamorous and kind of playing that fun dress-up game and it’s like that is my brand. And it completely makes sense for that to be kind of how I show up at events and things like that. But at the same time, I don’t want it to be the kind of maybe intimidating woman whose cold and and a little scary to be around. And I’m not that and so it didn’t make sense for me to play at that. So for me, it was just kind of giving myself these words. And they’re directed to me. So for me, it was… I wanted to be able to come across as vulnerable and playful and whimsical and sensual and inviting and all of those other things that I think are super important to be able to have relationships especially with women. Who are my main audience, my main client. -This to me, words mean a lot to me. And I have not at all gotten this specific. But having a foundation, I think that’s something that I’m committing to right now is I need to get more clear on my words in different areas because having clarity on the words that then makes it seems like it’s going to make everything else easier. -Right. Well and what’s fun is it’s interesting because I… I was so nervous that I was going to be
showing up. I mean I was 25 when I started this business. And I was so nervous that I was going to be seen as maybe too silly or too young if I had those words. And so I was so focused on words like committed to excellence and successful and prepared and you know, things like that that are certainly important to my brand and to how I want people to perceive me and as a business woman. But not necessarily how I want people to see me as myself. So, I wanted to give myself words that were separated out. This is how I show up in my business and this is how I’ll show up when I’m serving you as my client. But this is how I’m going to show up as your friend and we’re going to bond and this is part of what I bring to the table. Because being able to photograph somebody… I mean, you have to have a bond and a connection with them. -Cool. So it’s kind of a take away for small business owners that are wanting to create a brand. The message here then is to come up with words. So if people see you, they see your brand, they see your website, they see photography. What words you want to come to their mind? Or what feelings you want them to have? And then I guess another level is okay, when they’re interacting with you, what experience you want them to have? What words to find that experience? And would you say hat the words are the starting point for creating a brand? -I would say it it’s the thought that goes into up with the words. And then for me a huge aspect of these words were just permission to show up as I already was in a way that said, “This is okay. This is okay in this context and this is okay in this context.” So… So it wasn’t necessarily about changing Who I am or changing how I’m being perceived or wanting to be perceived. It was more about saying, “It’s okay for you to be perceived this way and in fact, here’s why it’s good.” -So, you’d find this episode helpful, I know I did. But was also. Thanks so much. If people want to find you, where do they go? So, emilylondonportraits.com is my website. -We’ll link it below. -You can also find me on Instagram emilylondonportraits. And on Facebook. -Okay. So if you’re watching this on YouTube and you’re not a subscriber, be sure to subscribe. If you’re on LinkedIn then follow. Because we’re starting to post all these videos on LinkedIn as well. So, we’ll see in the next episode.