Be Your Own Brand - BYOB

Welcome to the renewed, repurposed, revitalized,  BYOB podcast.

BYOB is just a handy metaphor for Be Your Own Brand

Here is a podcast all about marketing your most important asset, that asset being the brand called you. We are going to explore various mediums to accomplish this. However, the number one area of discussion is “video marketing”

So what is video marketing? How does video marketing make my life easier and how does my business profit from this? Well, this and a whole lot more await your discovery right here.

Hello, my name is Ken Miller and I am your host and content curator for this podcast adventure of, “Be Your Own Brand” or BYOB for that handy acronym.

Having spent my entire career in sales and marketing I can wholeheartedly attest to the content and valuable horizons being presented herein. Right here at BYOB we’re going to be exploring, not only what those horizons are but how to, put you in the forefront of reaping those rewards; professionally, financially, and in your personal life as well.

Hello and welcome into the world of growth and opportunity as has never been experienced in the business world before. Never, has the solo professional had a more amazing horizon than he/she does this very day.

Right here at BYOB, we’re going to be exploring, not only what those horizons are, but how to put you in the middle of reaping the rewards. professionally, financially, and personally.

My name is ken miller and I’m your host and curator for this podcast adventure I call Be Your own Brand or BYOB for a handy acronym. 

As explained last session I pointed the direction/focus of byob toward the musicians who would aspire to thrive and not merely survive. So if getting in tune with your future and connecting to the opportunities that await you, right here is where you need to be. And I’m glad you are!

Sales and marketing can seem overwhelming and today’s landscape even more so. However, I can assure you the heavy hitters in this industry are into S &M big time or they ain’t gonna be heavy hitters no more.

Your efforts in the S&M arena are not to just get the next gig. It is designed to get you the gigs you want and can excel at. Last podcast episode rolled out the terms “inbound and outbound” marketing. This episode we’ll take a look at what those terms mean and what to do about it. In nutshell inbound is getting business to come to you and outbound is winking in the dark, you know what you’re doing but no one else does. Or at least the people you want to know what you do.

Marketing is for a musician the only way to get attention to what you do. Just a few years ago, one YT video would do the trick, now there are thousands every day, so drowning in other musicians' project is what happens today, not only on YouTube, it is the same everywhere.

Check out the entire episode: https://kenmillerconsults.com/category/byob/

Within the arena of building a personal brand as an effective, in fact, it is the only effective, consideration of any solo-preneaur. One genre has stood out as a particularly challenging effort for accomplishing this goal of a meaningful personal brand.

Be your profession as a lawyer, accountant, etc., the musician seems to be in an arena all by themselves. Talk about the necessity of personal brand building, nothing in my mind compares, to the challenges of the entrepreneur musician.

The landscape for marketing a musician’s brand today is as topsy turvy as it gets. Perhaps the main income source for many musicians, for the past couple of generations, has been club dates and concerts. This venue provided the foundational bread and butter of nearly every professional musician. Covid has all but decimated the club scene and just like that gone!

Compounding this problem is the music industry has changed drastically with or without pandemic intervention. The technology that beckons the musician from the pandemic collapse is the same road that entices the future. It is this same shifting of market forces that were changing the industry prior actually to Covid meddling. 

Hear the entire show: https://kenmillerconsults.com/category/byob/

We all know - at least intellectually - that marketing is essential if we want to grow a prosperous law or other service oriented business. And yet, a number of things get in the way... and often derail our best intentions when it comes to marketing.

One thing that gets in the way is the idea that "we shouldn't have to market." We confuse marketing with the dreaded word “selling”. We’re a profession! And an honorable one at that! Professionals shouldn't have to market... in fact it feels a bit cheesy (and unprofessional) to be marketing... But the (sad) truth is, lawyers and the like are subject to the rules of the marketplace. For good or for bad, whether we like it or not, we have to market - especially if we want to do the work we want to do and make the money we deserve.

Daniel Pink in his book “To Sell Is Human” includes this less than glowing description of selling. “Hello sales belch to the smart set sales is an endeavor that requires little intellectual throw weight. A task for slick glad handers who skate through life on a shoeshine and a smile. To others as the province of dodgy characters doing slippery things a realm of trickery and deceit get the speaking parts while honesty and fairness watched mutely from the rafters still others view it as the white-collar equivalent of cleaning toilets, necessary perhaps, but unpleasant and even a bit un-clean.

I’m convinced we’ve gotten it all wrong.”

Well, we can give Mr. Pink some leeway here and grant him some literary license for over-the-top exaggerations, maybe. I’m sure Mr.Pink expresses what many feel but are abashed to verbalize.

It is a safe bet that anyone who feels that marketing is selling simply does not understand marketing. Marketing and sales are so often used interchangeably as to appear synonymous. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Just in case you are wondering, The purpose of the marketing process is to express your positioning and point a view in a way that generates highly qualified leads. A point of view is part of your brand!

Hear here for the entirety. www.kenmillerconsults.com

Building your business means building yourself. Each and everything we talk about on BYOB is a problem or situation that I myself have or is experiencing. Every day I think and work on methods to increase my own consulting practice and these podcasts are simply the journey that I am traveling. No ivory tower pie in the sky approaches allowed. Remind myself every day I am a marketer that also does video production.

“Grow your email list.” “Speak in your community.” “Get active on social media.” “Meet people at events.” “Start a blog.” These are all recommendations a self-employed professional will hear when exploring how to build a thriving business.

There’s nothing wrong with this advice. Each one of these approaches has the potential to bring you more clients. But there’s another factor in the business-building equation, and it’s probably the most important. That crucial element is you.

In the past 30 days more video content has been uploaded online than the major US television networks have created in 30 years. Let that sink in for a minute.

It's no secret. That video is a powerful force. A force That's been growing in usage year over year in 2018, 87% of online marketers used video.

What has changed is how important video has become on every platform and channel across your entire business. And these days video isn't just for people with big budgets.

Years ago, video is almost exclusively produced by the high dollar creative departments. Equipment costs were high and measuring video success was limited today, all that has changed. Thanks to the rise of technology. Video is used more widely as a business strategy across marketing sales and service teams. Now marketing, sales ,or service teams, embrace this medium.

When done correctly, a video marketing strategy is an effective way to attract, engage and delight your audience in a human and helpful way.

The first step in becoming more adept at selling your expertise is getting intentional, but it's more concrete than that. Every sales meeting, email, piece of content - everything - should start and end with intention, aka an agenda and next steps. Every meeting needs a goal and clear next steps to drive the sale to a conclusion. 

Without a doubt at his very moment, you have the situation backward! Here’s why.

Seth Godwin’s book “This is Marketing”, sets this situation up-right. Here is an excerpt for illustration:

Marketing is not a battle, and it’s not a war, or even a contest, marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem. Marketing involves very little in the way of shouting hustling or coercion. It's a chance to serve instead.

The Lock and the key

It doesn't make any sense to make a key and then run around looking for a lock to open.  The only productive solution is to find a lock and then fashion a key.  It's easier to make products and services for the customers you seek to serve than it is to find customers for your products and services. And yet this is precisely the order in which we go about our sales and marketing.

Yet who needs this pounded into their thick skulls more than yours truly? If you, like me, exist in this new market reality landscape coming from the old “grip & grin” school, welcome aboard!

One of the biggest changes yours truly has had to adapt to is the near elimination of the face to face meetings. Meetings from sales calls or networking I was firmly entrenched in the grip and grin prospecting model. I don’t think that will ever return to the days of yore.

Fact is you need not be a crystal ball gazer to know who got you here is not going to get you there. Here is one week before Thanksgiving 2020 and we are still in this lock-down over the never-ending saga of Covid.

For the solo practice, these are indeed tough times. Small business is really taking the brunt of all the fall out from the many mandates and declarations.

If it was tough getting new business before today is even more challenging. Yet, so often the old mind-set of yesterday is all too prevalent.

"Just do great work."

That's the common wisdom of how to build a successful expert or service-based business. But it's definitely not that simple. Sorta the build it and they’ll come approach. Which is in fact no approach.

And whoever came up with that idea left out a big caveat: you also have to have the sales skills to sell your services. For some reason, the easiest maximum for professionals to forget is “nothing happens till a sale is made.

As the marketplace grows more crowded and noisy, establishing a competitive advantage should be your firm’s highest priority. But where do you begin? And is it even possible to differentiate your firm from a host of similar competitors?

If you can't sell your services, you won't be able to "do great work" in the first place, and clients who need your help won't get it.

In this podcast, I'll walk you through the 7 reasons why sales skills are so critical to selling your expertise.

There are few leaders who choose to inspire rather than manipulate in order to motivate people. Whether individuals or organizations, all these inspiring leaders think, act, and communicate in exactly the same way. And it is the complete opposite of the rest of us. Consciously or not, how they do it is by following a naturally occurring pattern that Simon Sinek calls "The Golden Circle".

Hear the rest of the story here: https://kenmillerconsults.com/category/byob/

Here is the home for must-have information for professional service providers. Attorneys accountants financial planners any type of professional service provider business development practice development client client retention no matter what you call it you need some marketing and sales skills to get it done successfully. And there is no better place for you to be good right here for the insightful and informative inbound marketing how to buy extension then getting a lifetime of enhancement and shipment and taking you on a step-by-step journey from barely survive to thrive.

It comes as no surprise that what got your here is not going to get you there this is not your Daddy’s marketplace. As if the landscape wasn’t changing  fast enough along comes Covid and presto we are in a sizemic upheaveal unlike anything we’ve witnessed before.

One of the biggest changes yours truly has had to adapt to is the nearly elimination of the face to face meetings. Meetings from sales calls or networking I was firmly entrenched in the grip and grin prospecting model. I don’t think that will ever return to the days of yore. Having said that what’s the alternative and the answer to that is remote selling.

Today’s podcast is going to explore this new phenomena maybe you call it Zoom meeting, live stream or what term you chose, but chose you must.

So, what ducks do get lined up to go from in-person to online selling, with recommendations about specific technology, how to build trust, and how to run an effective online meeting.

If you’re making the transition from in-person, offline sales to remote, online sales, you probably have one thing on your mind:

Hear here: www.kenmillerconsults.com