ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND STORY?
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Tips on how to tell your authentic brand story by Paula Brown
- When you tell your authentic brand story you will achieve buy-in from potential clients quite naturally
- What is storytelling? A story is your story. You’ve got to tell your own story. You can’t tell somebody else’s templated story.
- It’s about engaging that inner star quality, your purpose
- People are saying, “Well, I don’t believe in niche marketing anymore.” And I say, “Well, I do. But my niche is one person.” I work with one person at a time.
- FIND YOUR PURPOSE – see below
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND STORY?
ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND STORY?
You’ve got to tell your own story. You can’t tell somebody else’s templated story.
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Doug Morneau: Well, welcome back, listeners in another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today in the studio, I’ve got joining me, Paula Brown. Now, I met Paula at a New Media Summit in San Diego this year and we had some great conversations and I enjoyed both her conversations and some of the illustrations that she shared with me.
Paula’s life story began when she forged her belief that your story is a masterpiece and it’s in your heart that you need to have a clear picture of your purpose. She helps get leaders unstuck from the story of invisibility. Her unique stories in life-after-death experience led her purpose and quest. She is a hardest and intuitive graphic facilitator, a purpose coach, an author, a speaker.
Leaders hire Paula to literally and figuratively draw out their authentic story, the true heartfelt purpose of their vision so they can lead with very unique values. Her Sketch Quests pulls extraordinary from ordinary attracting aligning followers for her clients.
Paula’s best-selling book, Fur Shui: An Introduction to Animal Feng Shui, available in the US, Canada, and the UK and also translated into Italian, shines her intuitive tools in the blue sky questing with and beyond the visible world. So, I’d like the welcome Paula to the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast today.
Paula Brown: Hi, Doug. It’s such a treat to be here and talking with you.
Doug Morneau; Well, it’s great to reconnect. We had some good conversations and it just proves that in this digital world that lots of people think we can do everything online, nothing beats meeting people face to face, having a coffee and having a conversation.
Paula Brown; That’s very correct and I’m a real one-on-one person. That’s how my business is driven and I just thought that your ideas about and background in marketing and branding really sung true to me. And I so appreciate the tools that you bring and the conversations that you bring online.
Doug Morneau: Well, thanks so much. Today, we’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you. We want to learn your superpower and I can’t help but acknowledge that one of the topics on your speaker one sheet was torn off, your story’s cloak of invisibility and we did have a quick Harry Potter conversation. Do you want to explain to our listeners what do you mean by that?
Paula Brown: Yes. I believe that the people that I am most helping now are the people who know their idea, know their process and are just speaking it and they’re still invisible. You’ve literally got a cloak of invisibility around your story and it’s all about storytelling now. It’s how you tell your story and what is your story? How do you define your story? How do you tell your story? It’s frustrating, it’s costly to be speaking and not knowing that your audience knows what you’re saying, your big ideas just lying there like a flapping fish out of water.
And if you show it, if you literally dumb it down to quick sketch illustrations, you are able to spread it the way that you are actually thinking about it to get everybody on the same page. And a lot of times, you’re speaking in master degree language and you have to be talking kindergarten. And by showing your ideas in visual form in a quick sketch, it’s an invitation to show that you’re vulnerable, to show who you really are, what your idea really means.
And it’s great. It opens the door to so many things, ripped off that cloak of invisibility and you may even be running around not knowing you’ve got the cloak on. It’s like, what do you do?
Doug Morneau: Yeah, why aren’t people being responsive? I think that not only would it help to engage your customers, your audience and grow your business from a pure revenue point of view, but it’s also going to make it easier, I’m assuming, for your team whether they’re remote or they’re in-house if you’ve got that, the story down where people can understand and relate.
Paula Brown: It certainly does because telling your story really from your authentic purpose of what and who you are and why you’re doing it is essential in building a culture. You’ll keep your best people. You’ll encourage them to express their ideas and all of a sudden, you’re co-creating rather than asking people just to comply dictums.
We’re now going into the world of feeling comfortable with our non-competency, so to speak. We’re feeling more comfortable with change and showing that and when you show the change and you show the direction you want to go, you’ve asked your whole business to be confident by the way you hire them and to shift and show that you’re going into someplace new and that you need help and you need everybody on board with their own ideas as well. It’s an invitation and it’s showing up, how you’re showing up to your culture. It’s really important.
Doug Morneau: I’ve also experienced a massive opportunity with the project we worked on with buy-ins from suppliers that we really should have had no right to dealing with. What I mean by that was we had huge, huge mega-corporations come to the table for a brand new startup because they caught the vision. The story was presented in a way that those people who realized that our clients weren’t going to write them a seven-figure check but they like the vision because they could understand that you came to the table, rolled up your sleeves and joined in as partners.
Paula Brown: Exactly. And when you show your vision rather than just have some lofty ideas and put it out there into the world, this is what I want based on I want from you rather than this is what my vision is and my excitement and my passion and my goals are. You give. You don’t just appear as a seller and a taker. And the more you show that the more you show what you’re giving in both word and visual, the more buy-in. You will naturally get it because there are so many people offering.
And you don’t want to be a commodity that’s just price based. You want to be a quality commodity that knows what you’re doing, is able to show what you’re doing and being. We’re human beings. We aren’t human doings. Who do you be? That’s when you get the buy-in. That’s how you communicate the buy-in.
Doug Morneau: Let’s drill down a little bit. Can you share an example with a client, maybe name a client or don’t name a client, it’s up to you. Our listeners get an idea what you’re talking about. What would the process look like for somebody that you will work with to help them to kind of reveal who they are and get them unstuck and be able to remove that cloak of invisibility so people can see them and see their story?
Paula Brown: Yes. I actually have two examples that they’re very different but the first one is a very quick example of a huge very confidential incubator in Sweden. They’re formulating new ideas for GPS systems and whatnot, and they have four different countries involved with this summit. Everybody brought their big ideas. It was all written down. It was all translated and the American who was in charge of organizing this came to me and said, “Hey, we’ve got all these big ideas.” The biggest complaint is that they don’t know how to communicate with each other.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND STORY?
ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND STORY?
You’ve got to tell your own story. You can’t tell somebody else’s templated story.
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All these ideas were laid on the table, four different huge white sheets compiled into a 22-page white sheet of copy. And he says, “Can you help? We just don’t know how to communicate this.” I took the white sheet and between the two of us, we figured out 10 illustrations, just black and white illustrations to spot through this white sheet.
The next meeting, they put illustrations in along with the white sheet, and all of a sudden people started talking because they all felt that, “Whoa, if somebody doesn’t like my idea, what am I going to do then?” Well, here are these non-intimidating quick sketch, really simplistic illustrations of people taking the wrong train into a cave and being eaten with a monster or whatever. They were just fun. It started conversations and it reached out to each country in a universal language and they started communicating.
Doug Morneau; What’s truly interesting … I’m not comparing what you do to some of the new illustrations that you see but I really like some of the new illustrations when you’re looking at a process that can quickly break down either a piece of a technology or a formula to execute a particular strategy. The infographics just seemed to be so visual, so catching and kind of what validates the idea of what you’re talking about is by having something visual is how popular that infographics have become as a way to start to communicate ideas in a non-text way.
Paula Brown: Yes, and it’s proven now at HubSpot. It’s a really interesting research on visual communications and listening versus thinking. And a visual process is 60,000 times faster than a word.
Doug Morneau: Wow.
Paula Brown: That’s why, yeah. That’s why you see all these icons and your Facebook posts and your Twitter posts and everything now. If you have an illustration that goes along with that, be it a photograph, a quick sketch or whatever, it is received five times more than one without. And then they ramp it up to now it’s 40 times more than without.
And so there’s a lot of information about visuals and we live in such a fast processing society now, we are hardwired to communicate on the visual platform. So, why not use something that is coming from our heart? When you’re heart-wired, you’re actually thinking with your heart and feeling with your mind. You’re shutting down the analysis-paralysis going forward. Why not use that in every aspect of your business? It really cuts the timeline of communicating in a universal language.
Also, it brings out the value. I had one Sketch Quests. I did these hour-long Sketch Quests and it’s based on one question and then I intuitively asked questions and then give a sketch summary and go over that. Now, as for a retreat owner and she had this five-star retreat. And she, for the life of her, could not figure out what her value was there. Her place was great but she wanted to really define her value and express that.
During the conversation, we went through all sorts of pros and cons, where do you flow, where do you not flow. It was a really neat little discovery session and at the end conversation, she was looking at the Sketch Quests and we got to page three about what are the values that you hold intrinsically and that comes out. And she says, “My gosh, look at these pictures and these words. Where did you get these?” I said, “They’re yours.”
Doug Morneau: That’s interesting. I’m just making a note here. Define a little bit more what is the Sketch Quests. What does that look like? If you and I were to hop on the phone and say, “Hey, last time we met face to face. This one we’re just going to go through the phone.” What would that process look like?
Paula Brown: It is really interesting. I ask people to bring one question about where they’re stuck or just where they’re at. It could be style or whatever and then I get on the phone with them and we just talk and I intuitively can find essence and focus. I was a branding expert for over 30 years for a large ad agency so I can get to the heart of things.
And then, I take notes. I listen and I sketch. And within 48 hours, I send a black and white summary PDF of our conversation that’s in a quick sketch with words and pictures. And the categories of the hour-long conversation just intuitively come and we sort through the categories. And it shows people where they’re at. It becomes a touchstone for stepping forward and sharing it.
And with this one individual who owned a retreat, she immediately shared this with a huge, huge executive board meeting and she got three really large commitments for retreats at her place from just sharing what she was good at. She was good at unpacking people’s baggage.
Doug Morneau: Wow. That’s really neat. I was trying to think of who told me this. I interviewed so many people, I can’t … I don’t want to just steal somebody else’s idea without giving them credits. I can’t remember who shared it with me and them basically … I think it was Jeffrey Shaw who basically, “You know, write a list of all the things that people compliment you on and then put a star beside the ones that you immediately dismiss.”
Paula Brown; Yes.
Doug Morneau: And he says, “That’s probably where some of your value for people is or lies because often, we’re as humble human beings where we dismissed some who say, “Oh, that’s a really good.” And I say, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
Paula Brown: Yeah, I tell people to think of me as they come and they’re going, “Oh, my gosh. What is this Sketch Quests going to reveal? Am I going to be embarrassed?” And I said, “Well, embarrassment is part of the shift. You just got to be vulnerable to it.” And then all of a sudden, they just go, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve got to share this with all these people,” and by sharing it, people find out who you are and what you do the best. And I call myself the sorting hat from Harry Potter. Pour things in and I’m going to assign you to a house that you really belong.
Doug Morneau: Now, that’s a whole different topic and I think that that would make me very afraid … I’d be afraid of what house I might end up in.
Paula Brown: Well, no. These are your own houses of your own choice.
Doug Morneau: Oh, okay. So, I’m not going to end up in Gryffindor-
Paula Brown: No.
Doug Morneau: Okay, good. That’s good.
Paula Brown: No, no. It’s just that I’ve always had this innate talent of just going big. This is the ketchup in the refrigerator door. This is your scrutiny. This is the heart of you that’s unique that your brain keeps shutting off. If you built this as your foundation, your authentic foundation for your business, you’re going to be authentically passionate about it and people are going to see it and the people that need you are going to come. The people who don’t need you are going to say goodbye and that’s a blessing.
Doug Morneau: Sure. Or the people who don’t like your approach. We had a brief conversation before we started recording about some people and the way that they operate in. Sometimes, it’s comfortable or maybe it’s outside of our comfort zone. You’re obviously not going to be attracted or do business with somebody that operates that way because it’s not your comfort zone which is like you said, it’s a blessing. It’s perfectly fine. There’s no sense wasting anybody’s time. It’s just not naturally going to be a fit.
Paula Brown: Yes, and it’s all about getting strong “trust, like and know.” It’s all about engagement and relationship and that’s what a good story does. There are so many things flip-flopping around about storytelling, it’s the new buzzword. What really is storytelling? A story is your story. You got to tell your own story. You can’t tell somebody else’s templated story.
You can use all the tools and all the advice and everything but if you’re telling somebody else’s story, then you’re not going to succeed. Maybe for a little while but you’re just not going to do it. It’s the bright and shiny object thing. You’re not a bright and shiny object. The bright and shiny object is your value and it lasts. It lasts.
That’s what you find out when you do a Sketch Quests or Purpose Process or even when you sketch out your classes, your learnings, your summaries, your talks, all of a sudden, you’re like you were talking about the checklists. All of a sudden, these things pop out of the page and you find out what you really need to be talking about and how you need to talk about it.
Doug Morneau: Well, this is charting new territory for me. This is not an area that I’m comfortable and this is not an area that I have lots of experience in. And I would like to think that I’m progressive and growing and open to change. I’m enjoying the conversation. At one point, I want to say this is kind of woo-woo stuff and I’m more of a direct response, go get a big stick, beat them over the head, shake them upside down till the money comes kind of sales approach.
I think this is really interesting. Having said that, that’s where I was. That’s not where I am now, what do you think people perceive or what is the biggest myth about the tactic that we’re talking about?
Paula Brown: I think the biggest myth about working and being and showing up on your purpose and authentic me is exactly what you said. It’s like, I’m in favor of going out and with the big stick and yelling. Yelling what you’re doing because you really need to do that. That’s part of the process, but what are you yelling? How can you lead and how can you … The biggest myth is that this is woo-woo. It’s not.
If you look at all the effective branding that’s been done in the past and now, it’s talking about the essence and the heart of what that product or service is and then you can go out with a big stick and shake people upside down and get the money. But what are you shaking about? They’re not going to buy unless you know and the biggest myth is like, “Oh, you’re going to market from the heart?”
Well, now, we can use heart and soul were 10, 20 years ago, we couldn’t. I found it very difficult. I was a new business pitch creative director for large agencies with international brands. And the biggest and toughest challenge was always peeling off the layers of benefit to find the real value. The value is within you every single day and you are born with it and that’s not woo-woo.
And a lot of people that do the authentic training and talk sort of go into the “Woo-woo, it’s intuitive.” Well, everybody’s intuitive. They just don’t realize it. They don’t use it. It’s a tool.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, and I guess part of the learning process is how to tell your story and there’s obviously stuff that’s appropriate and there’s stuff that’s not appropriate to share publicly. But in terms of your story and your marketing story and your brand story, so how would you work with somebody? Like how does the process start and how does it transition along because I knew to look through some of your materials in your website that you’ve got a number of tools and you do some one-off stuff and you do some longer coaching sessions. So, what would an engagement look like for somebody who wanted to discover their message and develop their story?
Paula Brown: I’ve got several little things that I can offer. I’ve got just a quest. I call them all “quests” because they’re journeys. I’ve got Sketch Quest which you can have an hour long summary and I’ve got the Why Quest where you just come and ask questions and I intuitively give you the correct answer which I actually read the essence of the energy that’s coming from that question.
Paula Brown: And I use both strategic and intuitive skills just to give you yes/no answers. So, that’s really simple. And then I do a purpose process which is diving deep into it if you’d want to do a purpose discovery which can take a two-month period or you can sign up for a six-month period.
The most important thing is just to call out, reach out and the people who are really stuck and frustrated and not going anywhere is like if you’re so busy doing that you’ve lost any … Take your pulse. What is the culture? What is your feeling about … Do you have a heartbeat left? Are you feeling it? If you’re not feeling it, then you need to do some purpose work and you need to back up and say, “Whoa, boy, let’s get done with the task and let’s go and really find out where the beginning is.”
Doug Morneau: Well, I’m not sure how people transition from where they are to serving or working from a heart and having a purpose. I remember from you one of the big wake-up calls was when my kids were quite young. My son was just a little guy and now, he’s produced a grandchild for us which we’re very happy about. It was a lot of-
Paula Brown: Congratulations.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND STORY?
ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND STORY?
You’ve got to tell your own story. You can’t tell somebody else’s templated story.
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Doug Morneau; Yeah, it’s pretty exciting and one more coming. So, I know we’ve got the little guy coming over tomorrow to hang out for the day and sleepover so it’s one of the advantages of being self-employed. It’s like, “Yeah, I’m going to take the den. I’m going to go chase him around the yard all day.” But my son said to me, I came home and he said to my wife. He goes, “Hey, mommy. Look, Daddy came home to visit.”
Paula Brown: Yes.
Doug Morneau: That was the big wake-up call for me when he was, I don’t know how old he would have been, five or six, thinking, “Hmm, what’s my purpose? Is my purpose just to work and build wealth or buy stuff or acquire things or is that to spend time with my wife who I fell in love with and married and now we have a child. Like what is my purpose? Like what am I here for?” That was a really big wake-up call to say, “You know, I’m doing this wrong.”
Paula Brown: Yes. And you constantly speak about superpowers and part of the superpower thing is that you recognize that you have a whole life. You have balance and you have harmony and when you’re out of whack, you just come home for visiting and I tell people all the time, “Stop and ask questions during your day.” Well, first of all, schedule in some good time, some fun time, some downtime. You’ve got to have a harmony and I tell people, “Always ask what’s the purpose of this. What’s the purpose?”
Doug Morneau: Sure.
Paula Brown: And then you’ll find out whether you’re doing tasks or goals and then that’s fine. Assign the task to the task pile and the goals to the goal pile but if you can’t find purpose or passion into what you’re doing anymore, you’re burned out. And it’s for solo entrepreneurs. It’s a really fast road to burnout and to quit and go back to the day job or something that just maintains the status quo and that’s not really growth. Am I growing and what’s the purpose?
Doug Morneau: Well, one of the things I noticed as we were out driving this weekend and I said to my wife, “The whole world is in a hurry,” and it reminded me of an Adam Sandler movie called Click. I was kind of going, “Is the whole world seems to be fast-forwarding?” It’s like, “Okay, how quickly can I get through school? How quickly can I get through college? How quickly can I get the job and get the corner office?” And pretty soon, I’m going to be 55 this year. Pretty soon, you’ll look and you’re going like, “Wow, I’ve been fast-forwarding my whole life and now I’ve got kids and I got grandkids. And I’ve got friends that are retiring and I say that I missed those 40 years of my life because I was fast-forwarding. I was in such a hurry to get to whatever it was fill in the blank.
Paula Brown: Yeah, and that’s a doing rather than a being. And if you just take the word “be”, it comes up a lot in my Sketch Quests and my purpose coaching. It comes up a lot when people get to that tipping point where they’re just pausing and what do you believe, how do you belong. The word “be” is just, that sets the first door into finding out what your unique reason is why you be here. Are you being the person that you would like to be talked about after you pass away? What’s your legacy of being?
And I even had people come for Sketch Quests and ask, what is my legacy? And I sketch out their days of legacies so that they can use it as a touchstone later on when they get off track. It’s really easy to get off track but when you get off track and when you get off track, it’s uncomfortable.
Doug Morneau: Yes, it is. Can we shift gears? Let’s talk about Blue Sky Ideation. You often hear people talking about creativity and innovation. And so, just expand a little bit on what that means and how you help people through that process.
Paula Brown: That’s exactly where you’re finding the extraordinary in ordinary. And you can start out by looking at a pencil. And you know it’s a pencil but what are the extraordinary things that come from that pencil? What are the possibilities of that pencil? And that’s just using an example. It’s a switch in thinking. My fifth-grade teacher took an apple and he sliced it in a conventional way, and you see the inside of the apple and the seeds and then he took it and sliced it horizontally. And when you crack it open, there’s a star inside. And he described my talents as finding a star. And, yes, I love this guy. He looked like Paul Newman too. I had a crush on him.
Actually, it’s about engaging that inner star quality, your purpose. Set your purpose. And everybody has got it. And so, it’s all about the relationship you have with yourself, really.
Doug Morneau: Well, it’s interesting when you talk about getting these things down in visual. I’m a big digital guy and so I like say as an old guy, I’m pretty savvy on all the new tech stuff and social media stuff but I still find myself in love with the pen and paper. As much as I like computers and technology and stuff that I do, and I read books on my Kindle. I’ve got a couple of Kindles, I still like a paper book. I still like to sit down with a sketch pad with a notepad to make notes to draw my flow charts. I’ve tried all sorts of mind-mapping software but there’s just something for me that just doesn’t feel right unless I’m actually writing it and I can see it visually on the page opposed to scrolling through a bunch of screens on my computer to find all the pieces.
Paula Brown: Exactly, and that’s very key. I think the more digitally we go based, the more people will crave the connection to their senses again. I think we’ve gone way off to the pendulum on the left and then we need to bring it back because when you’re touching, when you’re feeling and when you’re seeing, and this is a lot of basis for shamanic healings too, is to use your senses. And why not just sense and feel your way into your business? I think it would be … I think that’s why people like the person who is sending the car to Mars on a rocket, he acts on his feelings and then when he makes mistakes, a billion dollar mistakes, “Oops, sorry. I made a mistake. Maybe I need to learn more about that.”
But it’s like stepping out and doing the being part of it and not just thinking about it. People are in their heads when the digital and that’s great, but the comfort that you find with putting it down, you’re actually putting it down in a materialistic world, in the physical world and it manifests when you put and feel and see all. Use your senses and put it down in the … It’s amazing how quickly things manifest when you draw it out, when you journal it, when you write it. There’s a comfort zone that you’re born with when you do these things. And when you show people your drawings or your sketches or communicating pictures, you’re tapping into their feeling zone which is not being tapped into very often now. It’s like writing somebody a letter of thanks.
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SHARE THIS EPISODE: ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND STORY?
ARE YOU TELLING YOUR AUTHENTIC BRAND STORY?
You’ve got to tell your own story. You can’t tell somebody else’s templated story.
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Doug Morneau: Yeah, that’s a great point. That’s so funny. I’ll just share a quick story. I’ll just narrow this down to just say it’s about men. Often men, the very ego-driven and very competitive. You get together and you’ll talk about networking and networking events. And I think what typically happens is it seems like there’s a bit of competition, so you go to a Chamber of Commerce event, Board of Trade event. You collect a bunch of business cards. You put them on your desk. You get tired of looking at them on your desk. They fall over you, put a rubber band on and then you put them in your drawer. You go to the next event and pretty soon, you got a drawer full of business cards and rubber bands.
And I decided to take a different approach. I decided to send people a letter, just a simple letter, just a letter that I custom wrote based on our interaction and put a real stamp on it and wrote their name on the front then put a label on. And people phone me as if I had sent them a gift. They’re like, “I got your letter.” It’s like, “It’s a letter, right?” I mean, I’m not putting down their feeling but it’s a 50 cents stamp and a plain envelop and a typed letter that I signed. But I think you’re right. It shows how much people still crave that type. I’m in the email space, but people still, they want to get that tactile response.
Paula Brown: Exactly, and even in email, you can send along a little visual. You can send along … The important thing about what you’re doing in email is that you’re communicating your story rather than your benefits. And so, there’s a conversation going on. So, people have conversations visually, tactilely and word wise and just emotionally. And it’s just showing up as who you are. That’s the most important thing and by sending that letter, you’ve got another form of communication that somebody opens, reads and that’s an engagement. That’s an emotional engagement with somebody. That’s a purposeful engagement. And it’s not just sending out to a list of a thousand people. It means that you’re engaged with what they’re doing and you’re interested in what they’re doing. That’s how it works.
Doug Morneau: Well, it’s funny that you mentioned that because someone had shared with me and I didn’t know this. We’ve read the Harry Potter series. My wife loved the stories and she … When our kids were younger, we’d get together Sunday night and she would read a couple of chapters before they went to bed. It became a family activity. What I didn’t realize was that when the author wrote the book, her first book that she wrote it for to one of her children.
I started thinking … I think, well, so as a marketer when we’re creating marketing material or communications, often we’re thinking what does the marketplace want to see? What do the masses want to see? What do the people want to see? What do all my customers or my database want to see? And she boiled it down to, “I’m writing to one person.” So I thought it was so interesting that the whole focus was on writing to one person although it’s been received worldwide. But the focus wasn’t to write something that what will the world like. It was what will my … I think it was her daughter, what will my daughter like?
Paula Brown: Yes, and so when you do that one on one, it’s like what we were talking about earlier of doing summits where you can actually meet people. It’s a one on one and that’s so important. And when you pare your focus down to a picture or a word or a letter or even the book, if you focus on the one-on-one experience of exchange, of telling who you are authentically, it’s just going to attract the masses.
Paula Brown: I often say people are going, “Well, I don’t believe in niche marketing anymore.” And I said, “Well, I do. But my niche is one person. I do one person at a time,” and that’s how I gain my referrals, my shares. My business grows one person at a time but I work with influencers and leaders. By working with them, it trickles down to encourage everybody to do that one-on-one communication. That’s how you co-create. You can’t co-create in masses of 50. That’s like what? In advertising, we use you to call it the whatchamacallit, when you’d get 50-some people all snapping at the bit to changing and evolve a brand, you need one person. You need one idea. You need one focus, and you’re absolutely correct.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, I was surprised because I’ve been on the other side as a marketer. I’m thinking how can we, like the Tim “The Toolman”, how can I have more power? How can we have more reach? How can we do more this? And surprisingly, over and over again, it comes down to building relationships one person at a time. It’s pretty tough to build an intimate relationship with a thousand people at once or a hundred thousand people at once. Or even 10 people at once is built with one person, one conversation, one social media interaction, one email at a time.
Paula Brown: Yes, and with social media, I know all my people on Facebook. I know them. With LinkedIn, I have associates but I still know them and all these lions and whatnot on LinkedIn, I think it’s great for email blast and whatnot. But I’ve worked with people who have been lions and whatnot and they ask for their voice. They don’t use their voice, and people don’t understand their voice yet it’s printed there. There’s no intimacy to it and I guess that’s where I’m coming from where if you’re going to engage a voice, you better be intimate about it.
Doug Morneau: That’s funny. Well, it’s funny because I look at these so-called influencers in social all the time because we’re looking for ways to help our clients leverage their business. And so, the coming back to the Tim “The Toolman” more power, I looked at an influencer just yesterday. I won’t mention her name but she’s got about 350,000 followers on Twitter and holds herself out as a social media influencer that will help you leverage your business, grow your business and have more sales.
And I thought, “Okay, I’ll go check out her profile,” and I looked at her recent tweets and if I took the last 10 tweets that she did, I don’t think she had 10 likes across all 10. How much influence is that? Size clearly doesn’t matter. People don’t like or share what you’re saying, so you can have the biggest list of people you want but if they’re not engaging it, it doesn’t mean anything.
Paula Brown: Exactly. If they’re not engaged, they can’t facilitate. And I was hired to do a sketch journal for a retreat in Hawaii, and so I was sketching every day and then I turned in the summary and it was a partnership. And I knew the person who hired me and she pulled in somebody who had this huge, huge Twitter platform. And he was supposed to help facilitate it, he couldn’t. And by the fourth day, the person who hired me hired me to also help facilitate the end of the workshop because I could do it because I had more of an intimate relationship with people than the person that had thousands and thousands of followers.
Doug Morneau; You can’t be intimate with thousands of people.
Paula Brown: Yeah. And he sat there and I said, “Well, is that a great vacation?” And I knew that doing double time which I really loved. I loved doing it, yet it was kind of like how quickly can you turn on the diamond and cover for a person who just has one story and it’s repeated over and over and over without any facilitation of value to other people.
Doug Morneau: That’s funny. Well, hey, Hawaii is a great place. We’re going to do double time in Hawaii, then double time in just lot of other places which I won’t mention. You said to me, hey, if you go off topic, to let you know, and I should have said the same thing to you. I think we’ve gone off in a few different directions. But I just wanted to say thanks so much for taking time and sharing a little bit of insight, a little bit of your story and some of the work that you’re doing. And I wanted to ask you a couple of questions as written close to wrap up. And one is what are you most excited about in the next, say, 6, 8, or 12 months about your business and what you see coming?
Paula Brown: I see a continuing to shift of paradigm from doing to being. And I see it and so many things. I see the success of actually forming an engagement relationships with people on social media and as well as in meetings. And I’m just really excited about that because I’m a purpose person and so, I’m finding purpose popping up everywhere and I really love it. And I also really love the growth of Airbnb of all things here in United States. It’s quite a controversy but it’s actually reaching into community and defining communities, what communities want, love and share. And so, it’s an intimate relationship with communities and what people want, need and help people want to travel and how people want to experience. The Airbnb thing is really exciting for me to follow.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, we’ve enjoyed Airbnb a number of times and just this special experience that you get that is just outside of staying in a big corporate concrete box.
Paula Brown: Yes.
Doug Morneau: Now, who’s one guest that you think I absolutely have to have on my podcast?
Paula Brown: Oh, hands down, Seth Godin.
Doug Morneau; Wow, that was fast. If I had an award for the person who did not stumble and go, “Oh, man,” you would win.
Paula Brown: Thank you.
Doug Morneau: That’s normally the toughest question I ask, and I think it’s because people want to be politically correct. But you’re just being you and you said, Seth Godin.
Paula Brown: Yes.
Doug Morneau: That’s a great idea. I hadn’t considered him. I have met him once at an event. I’ve got a number of his books, so I should make a little note here to give him a call. Cool. Now, back to you. What’s the best place for people to find you, track you down, learn more about you?
Paula Brown: Okay, my business name is Chi Lightful, kind of tough but it’s Chi like energy, and then lightful dot com. And you can email me at paula@chilightful.com. And I love to start a conversation with you. Call me up. My phone number is on my website. And also, I love to give you an offer, a free PDF of a neat, cool starter kit for finding your purpose or even thinking about it, expressing your purpose. It’s a real beginner. It’s the 5-Step Purpose Quest Map and you can get that on my site. It’s on the front page as well as you can go to purposequestmap.com and it will lead you right to it. I’d love to give that to your audience.
Doug Morneau: Cool, so that might be a beginning point before they would get to someone like contact you to do a Sketch Quest.
Paula Brown: Yes, or you can just call me up and we can do a why quest. Just answer yes-no questions and they’re extremely accurate and that because they’re coming from you actually I read from you. I’m an intuitive that way and also the sketch quest is strategy and intuition and then we got the purpose quest. I’ve got a lot of things I can offer you. It all depends on how deep you want to dive.
Doug Morneau: There you go. Well, some days, I want to dive really deep and other days, I’m very afraid.
Paula Brown: Don’t be afraid to be afraid. I challenge incompetency.
Doug Morneau: Well, I mean the good news is the private conversations. So, listeners, I mean, that it’s not like this is going to be a live video zoom chat as Paula is going through these questions with you. If you’re not … Yeah, you don’t have to worry.
Paula Brown: It’s all confidential. No names will ever be mentioned.
Doug Morneau: There you go. Thanks again, listeners, for tuning in this another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. If you have not subscribed to our podcast, I would ask you to do that. Also, subscribe on our website to our email list and you’ll get details of upcoming podcast and podcast that have come so you can go back and refer to them. So, thanks again, Paula. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day and sharing with our audience. I think you’ve left a lot of value for people here.
Paula Brown: Great, Doug, and I so appreciate the value you bring. And I’m not a tech person, so I’m wild to hear what all your people bring in so I can facilitate my growth and change too.
Doug Morneau: Well, no problem. I mean, not everyone is a tech person and I get that. And I think often the society is going what you said too far down that direction and not being in touch and listening to their body and even listening to what their purpose is. I appreciate that. So, listeners, I look forward to serving you on our next episode, so thanks for tuning in.
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