Different Podcast

What do broadcasting and financial planning have in common? For Shana DiMarco — everything.

In this powerful episode, Kelly Brito chats with Shana DiMarco, a former broadcaster turned financial advisor for athletes, creatives, and professionals navigating big life transitions. They dive into real talk on financial education, budgeting, building good money habits, and why it’s never too late to start over.

Whether you’re reinventing your career, learning to budget smarter, or just want to build wealth on your terms, this conversation is for you.

🔑 Topics covered:

• Why athletes often face unique financial challenges

• Building better habits: budgeting, insurance, and financial confidence

• How to choose the right financial advisor for you

• The emotional side of career change (and how to own your next chapter)

✨ More from BrandHive:

Events →  Luma

Connect →  IG and Threads

Weekly Tips & Updates → The Newsletter

More info → ⁠BrandHive.social⁠

Shana DiMarco → LinkedIn and Instagram

Takeaways

1. Shana DiMarco transitioned from broadcasting to financial services to help others.
2. Financial planning is crucial for everyone, especially athletes.
3. Growth is essential; if you're not growing, you're dying.
4. Many people lack financial education, which can lead to poor decisions.
5. Budgeting is a fundamental habit for financial health.
6. It's important to feel comfortable with your financial advisor.
7. Life insurance is essential for financial security.
8. Career transitions can happen at any age; it's never too late.
9. Financial mistakes often stem from a lack of guidance and education.
10. Seeking help for financial issues is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:42 Broadcasting → Finance: Shana’s Story
02:52 Growth or Stagnation
05:24 Athletes + Financial Education
08:14 Personalized Financial Planning
11:00 Common Financial Mistakes
13:38 Building Healthy Money Habits
15:42 Career Changes at Any Age
17:59 Making Finance Feel Safe
20:01 Final Thoughts

In this episode of the BrandHive Podcast, Kelly Brito discusses the importance of upholding brand promise during collaborations. She emphasizes the need for clarity in roles, audience compatibility, and maintaining brand integrity to ensure that collaborations enhance rather than dilute a brand's message. The episode also covers the significance of evaluating collaborations post-event to ensure alignment with brand values and promises.

More info → BrandHive.social

Events → BrandHive on Luma

Interaction + BFFs → BrandHive.social on IG and Threads

Killer tips on business, branding, networking → The Newsletter

Takeaways:

1. Collaborations can dilute brand messaging if not managed properly.
2. Visibility opportunities must align with brand integrity.
3. Brand promise is an internal commitment to audience expectations.
4. Avoid over-accommodating partners that misalign with your brand.
5. Define clear roles and goals before collaborations.
6. Maintain your brand's signature energy during partnerships.
7. Evaluate the success of collaborations post-event.
8. Curated networking can foster meaningful partnerships.
9. Don't compromise your brand for the sake of collaboration.
10. Engage with your audience to understand their expectations.

Quick Insights:

• "Don't let your brand fade in the background."
• "Don't be a people pleaser in collaborations."
• "Evaluate the collaboration after the event."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Brand Hive and Collaboration Focus

00:38 Understanding Brand Promise in Collaborations

02:45 Challenges in Upholding Brand Promise

05:04 Strategies for Successful Collaborations

06:19 Invitation to Engage and Upcoming Events

Luxury brands can be built around a tangible material or around an experience. But what exactly makes these products or services so enough that people will easily pay $2,000 to $50,000 for them?

Can you invest in branding to start a brand-new business? Absolutely! But the truth is you do not need to. Chances are you will rebrand in a year or two. That's not to say you shouldn't work on your visual identity, but it shouldn't be a primary focus. There are other things more important in the "behind the scenes" branding for a new business -listen to the new episode!

Font psychology post: https://kellybrito.com/blog/fonts-psychology-and-how-to-choose-the-right-font-for-your-brand

For more branding, go to https://kellybrito.com

For the free branding library, go to https://experience.kellybrito.com

IG/YT/Tiktok/LinkedIn and more: @HelloKellyBrito

The first step in creating a brand that stands out in the market is to define our brand identity -a must for any business, in any niche.

You can read the full post about Defining Your Brand (identity) on Medium or on my Blog.

Here's a nice snippet:

My 3 favorite things about building a strong brand identity are:

* It helps build trust with our customers;

* Increases brand recognition;

* Becomes an important mechanism to generate sales.

3 Question To Help You Define Your Brand

* The Values Your Brand Stands For

* Your Brand’s Mission

* What Makes Your Business Unique

On the next episode we will cover Brand Story!

→ Read 5-Steps To Build Your Brand Foundations

→ Read Defining Your Brand Identity

→ Shop Brand Design & Strategy on Etsy

→ Visit KellyBrito.com for branding freebies, courses, and more!

Would you agree that branding a business means humanizing it? As in giving the business human-like traits?

If we think of branding in that way, giving a business human-like traits, it might be easier to define our brand's identity. But I do have some general steps to help you get there faster.

Brand identity is one of the most important things in our brand. It helps us connect with the right audience and assists in making our business look and feel unique. When it comes to visually defining a brand's identity, things can become tricky.

1. Being True To Our Brand Or Following A Design Trend?

It seems simple, but a lot is involved in visually defining a brand. For starters, being true to our style instead of following trends is no easy feat. It seems like all popular brands in our circle are "dressing" the same style, doesn't it? As of now, in this post's latest edit, it's classy serif font in a mix of regular and italic on header titles, all in a graphic or website made of tons of beige with black.

I want to be that tall, skinny, serif font in beige clothes bitch too! But feels unaligned. Feels limiting for my business and is not the only type of people I hang out with (A.K.A. buyers).

Everyone says they want to be their "authentic self" today, but everyone is wearing beige with serif.

Love, we can't all be serif in beige. Some of us are a rainbow! Some of us are modern and minimal. Some of us are feminine… And they are all fabulous, as long as it's the right style for your business.

2. You Are NOT Your Brand, Your Business Is Your Brand.

Since I just humanized branding, I feel this is an important distinction to make -especially for personal brands: you are not the brand.

We may love vintage and feminine style, but is that our BRAND?

When creating a brand's identity, and then designing its visuals, we are not browsing for a new painting for our living room. It is not supposed to be something we visually love because it feels "so me!".

The function of a brand's visual identity, the logo included, is reinforcing the business goals, amplifying the brand's messaging, and being that beam of light that will attract the right audience. We are designing more for the audience than for ourselves.

That's why being clear on our target audience and doing market research is so important: we want to create a brand identity that helps our business stand out from the crowd (competitors) so we can be seen by those awesome people (target audience).

A brand is the audience-facing side of a business. A brand is never a person. A person is too awesome and rich and infinite to fit in a brand.

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NEW TO BRANDING? START WITH THIS MOODBOARD BLOG POST.

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3. Start Branding With Purpose

One thing I’ve learned is that we all should be branding with purpose, not accidentally, as we go. Why? Because otherwise, we are wasting time, energy, and losing money. Being intentional and purposeful means we have a vision and, hopefully, a plan -these will increase the chances of our business success.

When we have a clear purpose for our brands, it all becomes much easier.

So, before I finish this post, I’ll leave some things I think can help anyone on their journey to achieve the perfect brand identity structure (if such a thing exists!):

Discover

* Understand your purpose

* Define your audience

* List your goals, services, products

* Be honest about the things you like and dislike in your brand

* Organize your ideas and eliminate what doesn’t seem doable at the time

Define

* Collect inspiration and define your visual style

* Define your brand’s message and purpose clearly

* Research your market

* Understand you

On The Branding Segment

The 5 Steps To Build a Memorable Brand post was sent to the newsletter yesterday. Starting July, the 5 Steps Branding episode will be available a full week after the newsletter -so, subscribe! 📩

On The Entrepreneurship Segment

And here's my Medium post with 10 Best Places To Find Freelance Work (for creative women)

I want to know from you: Does Using A Gmail Email Affect Your Brand Image? Go to the post and let me know!

Ok, friends, the audio is horrible. But the windows are open, the mic is iMac's, and I don't care! haha I just wanted to jump in and update you on a few things:

* The podcast is back in June (finally!) 🥳

* I apologize for being MIA -there has been way more personal problems than I've been able to handle recently.

* I have retired from custom branding design work, after 20 years! 🤯

* My Etsy shop is still up and running (since 2013).

* The newsletter is now monthly and will bring 5 AWESOME steps to help you build your best brand yet

* The podcast will break down those steps, weekly.

* The newsletter and podcast are now on Substack. So are my courses and resources -being shared under premium posts ($7/mo or $57/year).

I have hundreds of great content already created, so I'm automating things and sharing all with you starting in June. 💰💛

How do we create content that is on brand? We want to create content that supports our businesses growth. But it must also align with our brand strategy, as we want to continue to: Continuously reinforce our expert positioning in the market and have a recognizable brand identity.

On this episode, I'll loosely talk about:

My way to find content that in demand is doing a research. I usually research:

The full blog post is on my website's blog at KellyBrito.com , so visit my blog if you are the reading type! 

Connect with me on any social media at HelloKellyBrito - I am VERY social, so it won't be hard to find me. 

How do we create content that is on brand? We want to create content that supports our businesses growth. But it must also align with our brand strategy, as we want to continue to: Continuously reinforce our expert positioning in the market and have a recognizable brand identity.

On this episode, I'll loosely talk about:

1. Develop Our Content Pillars


2. Choose The Content Styles That Align With Your Brand


3. Reinforce Your Brand’s Personality

My way to find content that in demand is doing a research. I usually research:

• Hashtags on Instagram


• Posts on LinkedIn


• Facebook Groups


• Google

The full blog post is on my website's blog at KellyBrito.com , so visit my blog if you are the reading type! 

Connect with me on any social media at HelloKellyBrito - I am VERY social, so it won't be hard to find me.