043 | Keep Your Sparkle. 7 Strategies to Scale A Personal Brand-Centered Business as Female Leaders

In this episode, delve into the art of scaling your personal brand. Navigate through the delicate balance between expansion and resource management, ensuring your business flourishes while maintaining your unique touch. 

But that's not all—learn the secrets of systematizing success, building your dream team, and forging strategic partnerships that elevate your brand to new heights. If you're ready to grab the transformative power of scaling your service-based business, this episode is your roadmap to bold, beautiful, and brilliant growth.

In this episode, I discuss:

• The secrets of scaling your personal brand with expert guidance.
• How  to navigate the balance between expansion and resource management.
• Systematizing success while maintaining your unique touch in scaling your business.
• Assembling your dream team and forge strategic partnerships to elevate your brand.
• Gain a clear roadmap to bold, beautiful growth with actionable strategies for your service-based business.

This episode at a glance:

[04:02] Even the most personalized service has elements that can be systematized without dimming your sparkle.

[02:24] Scaling effectively means increasing your capability and reach without a significant increase in costs.

[03:39] Consider yourself the face of the brand, rather than the brand itself.

[08:21] Be consistent with your brand voice, because your story is your brand's backbone

[10:06] keep your digital platforms pulsing with that fresh, real content that resonates with your core message.

Resources and Links mentioned in this episode:

• Free Range Thinking
• Dawn Andrews
• Group Track CRM
• Zapier

You might also like:

• 5 Real Steps To Start Your Business
• How To Not Fail in Your First Year in Business
• Build Better Business Partnerships

My Good Woman is a podcast for bold female leaders hosted by me, Dawn Andrews! Grab a seat at the table for candid conversations with culture-shifting, glass-ceiling-busting, trailblazing women, and leading enterprises that are changing the world. Follow along so that you can catch all of the episodes. And before you go, leave us a review!

Want to increase revenue and impact? Listen to “My Good Woman” for insights on business strategy and female leadership to scale your business. Each episode offers advice on effective communication, team building, and management. Learn to master routines and systems to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Our delegation tips and business consulting will advance your executive leadership skills and presence.

Transcript

My Good Woman
Ep. 43 |  Keep Your Sparkle. 7 Strategies to Scale A Personal Brand-Centered Business

Dawn Andrews:

Your identity is yours. It's unique and it's separate from your brand. You are the face of your brand. You may be the values and the stories of your brand, but you ultimately are not your brand. 

Welcome to the My Good Woman podcast where we help female founders break past plateaus and get to the next level of business growth by refining their strategy building systems and streamlining operations. 

I'm Dawn Andrews and the founder and CEO of Free Range Thinking Business Strategy Consulting. Join me each week for candid conversations, with culture, shifting glass ceiling busting trailblazing women who are leading impactful enterprises and grab their strategies to help your business reach extraordinary levels of growth. 

Hey, hey, hey. Are you a service based business owner teetering on the edge of expansion, but terrified of losing that personal touch your clients love? Then you are in exactly the right place.

Welcome to My Good Woman. I'm Dawn Andrews, and today's episode is Think Like a Strategist, where I give strategic answers to listeners business questions. And today's question is from Nika. This question really hits home, I'm going to be honest with you, because I feel it. I've lived it and I'm here to tell you about it. The question from Nika is,

how do I scale a business that's based on a personal brand? 

It is a conundrum that every entrepreneur faces at one point or another. And Nika, I want you to know that you are not alone in this. So before I get into the specifics and give you some help, we need to talk about a couple of things, three things actually.

The first thing is I will give you everything that I can based on your question. And if we were working together, I could go into more depth and detail and specifics related to your unique situation, but I'm going to do my very best for you in this conversation here on the podcast. So, the next two things that we need to talk about are related to your question.

Let's talk about the difference between growth and scale. 

Imagine you're planning a garden and when you're focusing on business growth, it's like planting more and more flowers in your garden. You're adding variety, you're increasing the number of plants, but because you're doing that, it requires more water, more fertilizer and more of your time to take care of it, especially your personal time. You're expanding, but the demands on your resources are growing at about the same pace as your business. 

But business scaling is like setting up an irrigation system and using self sustaining plants in that same garden. 

You can cover more ground and ensure that all the plants are thriving without necessarily increasing your workload because you've got systems in place. And the garden not only expands in size, but it doesn't proportionally increase all of your resources and the usage of your resources. This scaling approach with the systems enables you to get greater coverage with your plants and greater beauty without an extra spike in the effort and expense.

Sound good? 

Scaling effectively means increasing your capability and reach without a significant increase in costs. Now that we understand growth and scale, and your question was, how do we scale a business based on your personal brand? Let's talk about the second foundational thing that we need to know before we get into the nitty gritty. 

So the next thing we need to talk about is separating your identity from your business. And that can be challenging, especially when your stories, your expertise, your credentials are what initially or even still brings in all of your sales and your clients. But I'm inviting you to make a slight shift in perspective. When you scale your business built on a personal brand, consider yourself the face of the brand rather than the brand itself. 

And in today's conversation in the world, everybody is talking about personal brands and that's not my brand, that is my brand. And we've conflated that idea with our identities. 

Your identity is yours. It's unique and it's separate from your brand. You are the face of your brand. You may be the values and the stories of your brand, but you ultimately are not your brand. 

So focus on selling your transformative services and delivering value to your clients rather than just promoting your personal identity.

Sound good?

Okay, cool.

So now we have a basis. We have the beginnings of our conversation. So now we're going to get into the nuts and bolts.

When you are scaling a business based on your personal brand, systematize.

Remember how we talked about the irrigation idea for your plants? Strip everything down. Because even the most personalized service has elements that can be systematized without dimming your sparkle. And once you have those systems, you can create courses, you can write books, you can create training programs.

I'm just asking you to find ways to define, describe, and bottle your secret sauce. Because that allows you to serve more people without cloning yourself and that is a win win.

The next thing that I'm inviting you to do is to make sure you're building a team that gets it.

And this is where the magic can happen because you need people who not only have the skills that you need, but also embody your brand's heart and soul. So if you haven't taken the time yet to really define what the heart and soul of your brand is. It's worth getting that out of yourself, because if it lives in you, if you're the representation of it, then you will never be separate from your brand, and it'll be really difficult to scale.

Because what we want to do is create a mini you army. You know what I mean? Not through cloning, but through culture. So you'll hire people who resonate with your mission and can multiply your impact.

The next thing to do is to up level your tech. And you may already be doing this, and if I'm saying anything that you're already doing, great, check it off the list. I just wanted to make sure that I gave you everything that you might want to consider as you're scaling your business that's born out of your personal brand.

The next thing, it's all about the tech.
 
Technology is not just about being your backend savior. It is about being your front of house charmer. It's the first contact that you'll have with a lot of your new clients especially as you scale. So having a way to be able to talk to more people and to nurture new people coming into your business is really super important.

CRM systems like high level and automation tools like Zapier or GroupTrack can help you connect all of your systems together and also make sure that you're maintaining your connection with your new clients. And it'll do it at scale, which is what we're talking about because it takes care of those entry level conversations before you really need to get into one on ones with them.  And again, one on ones doesn't need to be you. Get your team on it. Okay. So let tech take the reins on your routines so that you can gallop ahead with your big plans.

The next thing to do is to forge strategic partnerships. 

The fastest way for small businesses to scale, especially service based businesses, in my opinion, is through partnerships. And I openly confess that I have not taken enough advantage of this. 

Partnerships are like the extension of your brand on the dance floor. You're collaborating with like minded entrepreneurs, and it not only can elevate and maybe even iterate on your brand offerings, but it offers your brand new audiences who can fall head over heels for you because they already have something similar to you. 

This is where you swap podcast spots. You guest on webinars, you trade emails. This is about expanding your empire with integrity. And you're looking for those shoulder audiences. You're looking brands and or people or businesses that are serving the same audience, but doing it in a different way. 

Okay, a couple more things. And like I said, if you've already considered and or implemented these things, then great. You can always go a little bit deeper, go next level or hit the things on this list that you haven't been able to accomplish yet. Okay, last couple of things.

Be consistent with your brand voice, because your story is your brand's backbone. 

We already know that because of what we talked about at the beginning of this episode, keeping your story straight and strong across all your platforms and your people ensures your brand's identity lives on beyond you.

If you can package up your brand story and your brand journey in a way that's undeniably you, but easy for others to repeat, share, and celebrate; that clarity and consistency will make your brand a beacon and make it easier to scale.

Delegate if you want to dominate.

And again, it is hard when you have built a brand around yourself. So these are all new skills that as a business owner, you're developing. Because girl, I know you can't do it all. So to truly scale, you do have to effectively delegate and everything that we've talked about up to this point makes delegation easier. You've got to hand off those less critical tasks to trusted team members because they are below your pay grade.

It frees you up to focus on strategy and innovation and the stuff that fuels your growth and ignites your passion.

And then the last thing is stay visible.
 
When you've been working hard for so long building a brand that your face is essentially the logo, as soon as you start to scale, it's really easy to want to step out of the spotlight and let all of this automation and your team take over for you. And I, totally get it. Everybody needs a break, but your visibility, you are now the face of the brand. And your online presence is like your digital handshake. It's you and your credibility getting out there and meeting new clients, but doing it in a leveraged way. 

So keep your digital platforms pulsing with that fresh, real content that resonates with your core message. And remember that every post or video or podcast is an extension of you. So you can record today, but that recording can live on for days, weeks, months, even years beyond you. And that's effort that you don't have to expend past that moment and in addition you can still have your team support you with everything that I've mentioned.

I've just blasted you with a bunch of information so how this would go if you and I were actually talking together is this would be more of a conversation rather than me just laying it all out for you. I'd be learning in intimate detail what you've tried so far, what has worked, where you get tired and frustrated, where you fly and things come easily to you and building on the stuff that is the most fun and the easiest so that you have your specific and unique roadmap to get your business growing and or scaling.

So Nika, what I want you to remember, and for all of you founders that are listening, is that scaling your personal brand doesn't mean diluting your essence. It's about really refining it and crystallizing it and then strategically amplifying it so that more of the world can benefit from what only you offer. 

So girl, I know you've got this and I can't wait to see what you do next. 

And for all you other good women out there that are listening, if you've got a question or maybe you're keen to get business coaching right here on the podcast, don't be shy, reach out, connect with me on LinkedIn at free range thinking and send me a quick message with your question or with your request to be coached because I am here to help you grow and scale your business boldly, beautifully, and brilliantly.

 So I will catch you next time and I can't wait to hear more of your questions.