917 Lauren Bayne:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP917 – Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Lauren Bayne

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Lauren Bayne:

The fact that you can just show up and be polarizing and still have a whole bunch of people that love you and still have a bunch of people rallying for you and giving you business, then that gives you the confidence to know that those are your people. It’s the ability to self-love all your curves and all your imperfections and everything that makes you ‘you’. Once you can truly say, I don’t care if I’m liked and I don’t care how many people are engaging with me, and I’m just going to keep going and keep going and doing what I know is right and not let the marketplace bend me in a different direction.

Melinda Wittstock:

It can be hard for any brand to find a signal in the noisy cacophony of our attention economy, where information is abundant, but trust is in short supply. So, when it comes to building your personal brand, it’s vital to dare to be different, dare to be the authentic you, no matter how many haters are out there, says branding expert Lauren Bayne. Today we talk about what it takes for entrepreneurs to build an effective personal brand, by weaving their personal identity seamlessly into their ventures.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who started out in the advertising world for big Fortune 500 brands like AT&T, Pennzoil, Southwest Airlines and Chili’s before going out on her own as an entrepreneur and what she calls a “personal brand creative director” for entrepreneurs, speakers, coaches, authors, consultants, and professionals who want to express their unique personal brands through distinctive, brag-worthy marketing assets.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today Lauren Bayne shares what it takes to build a compelling personal brand that aligns and supports your business. We talk about the power of authenticity and polarization, and why we must all overcome our fear of not being liked. Often the best personal brands repel as much as they attract, so it all comes down to building a brand that aligns with the authentic you.

Melinda Wittstock:

Lauren will be here in a moment, and first:

[PROMO CREDIT]

Eight years ago, I started this podcast because I wanted to help women succeed as entrepreneurs. Over the years, I’ve driven more than $10 million in sales to the women I’ve featured on this show, and this year I’m taking my investment in female founders to a whole new level as a venture partner of the new firm Zero Limits Capital, where we’re dedicated to investing in highly scalable seed stage startups founded by women and diverse teams – a mission more important than ever as the Trump administration cracks down on anything and everything DEI. We’re looking for innovators with exciting new applications of AI, Blockchain and other emerging technologies that make a social and sustainable impact to change the world. Is this you? If it is, take a moment and tell us about your opportunity at bit.ly/ZLCintake – that’s bit.dot.ly/ZLCintake – capital ZLC lowercase intake.

Melinda Wittstock:

What makes you connect with a brand? Why one ice cream but not the other? Why this coach but not that coach? Why click on this but not that? Branding is all about emotional connection, and no one brand is going to resonate with everyone, not even Apple. So, what does it take to create a personal brand that is authentic to you and attracts your ideal customers? Lauren Bayne has created compelling branding for fellow founders, such as SmartyPants Vitamins, Deep Eddy Vodka, Nui Organics, Lodgewell, Safe Kids and Betty Sport, and today she gets into the nuances of building a brand both personal and scalable, with practical advice and real-world examples to help you navigate your own personal branding journey.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Lauren Bayne and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Lauren, welcome to Wings.

Lauren Bayne:

Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, we’re going to talk about personal branding today and that’s a challenge for a lot of entrepreneurs. I mean, some entrepreneurs, you know, they build a business around their identity. But there are many others where they’re the founder and the CEO, but they don’t necessarily have a personal brand. So, let’s get into the basics of what makes a great personal brand. Let’s just start there. What makes it great?

Lauren Bayne:

Okay. Well, that’s a, that’s a very subjective answer. I cut my teeth in the advertising industry as a creative and so I kind of come at that answer from a different perspective. I think that the name, the title and the label of personal brands actually taken on different meanings through different seasons of the last decade or so too, with how people are showing up and using their reputation and their personality as an asset and leveraging that and monetizing that into some kind of service. I think when it comes to entrepreneurs, which you started talking about here at the beginning, what makes a great personal brand to me is just the authenticity of you. So, when any founder starts a company, there is something about them, either the idea, either their background. If like say they did medical sales for such a long time and now they’re starting a medical company, you know, it ties back to that. It could just be a person that saw an opportunity and wanted to innovate and do something differently.

Lauren Bayne:

But every great entrepreneur is the essence of them. It’s their idea that shows up, whether or not they want to market that and have their, their name be part of their business and use it in that way that goes different directions. And that’s kind of a top-down decision. So, whether what makes a great personal brand to me is you being authentically you by showing up as the one of a kind you that you are. And so that’s what I’ve been kind of rallying for this last seven months. As I’ve carved, as I’ve carved out a new business opportunity for me, my whole career has been helping brands in the product and service industry create unique identities, unique advertising campaigns and just be really creative for them in that capacity. So, when I shifted to working with just humans and just the service that they provide as a consultant or as a coach, as a speaker, as a podcaster, authors, or even entrepreneurs, it’s what makes your brand and what makes you different and unique and let’s make sure that we are selling it that way to your audience. So, what makes a great personal brand to me is just distinction and showing up uniquely you, which is why my icon is.

Lauren Bayne:

My logo is a unicorn. Because that is what essentially I hope to do to help you stand out like a unicorn in a field of horses.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s beautiful. We live in an attention economy, okay. We have so much information. I call it infobesity. Right? There’s a lot of information, disinformation, just noise, noise, noise. And so how to cut through all that and stand out.

Melinda Wittstock:

Authenticity is obviously a really big part of that, but when you’re helping people really get first of all clear on their personal brand and then express it through their marketing and advertising and such, what are some of the ways that they can actually be seen and heard more effectively?

Lauren Bayne:

So, I use this example a lot. When it comes to walking down the frozen food section or the ice cream section of your grocery store, there are pint after pint after pint of ice creams. And they’re all doing the same thing. So, let’s take like a confidence coach or somebody, you know, a coach, a personal coach, personal development coach. They are the ice cream. They are doing the same thing, but they’re showing up in a unique way and doing their own spin on it. And that’s what Haagen Dazs is to Ben and Jerry’s, which is to Blue Bell, which is to the next one.

Lauren Bayne:

The initial, the visual that you first look at this analogy is the packaging. And so how Ben and Jerry shows up is very different than Haagen Dazs, if you compared them side by side. So, when people are shopping you, that’s some of the first ways that you’re going to greet people and shake their hand visually. I talk a lot about the packaging of your personal brand and what that looks like. So, standing out in the attention economy, as you said, can start with just your visual. Personal brands that we all know, like the Gary Vees and the Brene Browns of the world, their visual is an aesthetic, or there’s other people too, that actually really go into what they’re dressing like and what they look like. But so much of that is their voice and how they’re showing up with authentically, with how they share their thought, leadership. And so again, that is a still a kind of an emotional connection we have as consumers with that person.

Lauren Bayne:

And so, we have the visual, we have the voice and the message. And so, when you are selling your thought leadership that is authentically you, it’s what you believe, it’s your expertise. And so, you deliver that in such a way that people become either turned off by it or they love it and they, they follow you for it. If we are going to treat that as an actual, which is what I kind of was wondering if it’s even applicable this last 6 months I was like, can we treat a personal brand like an actual brand where we are very intentional with how these people show up when they don’t have the years and years and years of the viral TEDx talks or using Gary Vee again as an example of having that reputation that people already know organically. I believe it’s a complimentary service to say, well yes, Nike wouldn’t have showed up as just a sneaker brand without some great branding. And that’s a bigger ecosystem of how you intentionally decide how do I want to show up to market? What part of my personality and my Persona do I want people to consume coupled with the expertise I’m going to give them and the service that I’m going to sell. I go all the way back to just that example to say like, think about how you are showing up and can you swap out your photo on your website with somebody else and would anybody know, you know, so think about like your words, your language, your colors, your font, all that stuff really does matter. To be that stamp and that imprint on people’s minds and why they’ll think that you’re Chunky Monkey.

Lauren Bayne:

I’m trying to think of a Ben and Jerry’s flavor over just a chocolate chip by Haagen. Do you know?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes, exactly. Well, something you mentioned a moment ago was that some people will hate it, and some people will love it. Is there a power in polarization, like just daring to be you like, because some people are just going to hate it. Right. Which is maybe good.

Lauren Bayne:

Absolutely. The word ‘best practices’ makes me cringe because best practices to me and, and that, I mean that’s why I’m a creative coloring side the lines, formulas really like formulaic frameworks, things like that. They, they, they, they’re necessary, they do have purpose. We do need some barriers. But the fact that you can just show up and be polarizing and still have a whole bunch of people that love you means that that’s just life in general. We’re not all supposed to be beloved. And if you can be polarizing and still have a bunch of people rallying for you and giving you business, then that gives you the confidence to, to know that those are your people. And I believe, and that’s why I also believe so strongly in like, brand attraction, especially when you’re first getting started, to just kind of carve out that, that group to find out who your people really are versus doing a bunch of sales in the beginning of like, trying to tell people how they should be thinking about you, just be you and see who you organically attract.

Lauren Bayne:

I mean, it’s the things we were probably taught as, as young women growing up. I didn’t learn it till way later to like, not conform and try to be like everybody at school, you know, because you want to fit in. And so that’s kind of by nature what we try to do. We look around to see, like, what’s best practice, like, who’s the popular kid and who’s this? Who’s that? I’ll, I’ll do that. I’ll do that. And so, you never get to really find out, like, who you are and who your voice is and attract that audience. So, yes, that’s a long way of saying yes. I do think that it can be an asset if polarizing ends up being who the market you want to attract.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s interesting, Lauren, that you mentioned conformity because I think we’re socialized, like you mentioned, to just really fit in. You know, it’s not that maybe we’re all still stuck in middle school or something.

Melinda Wittstock:

A lot of women have a fear of exposure in a way, or just allowing themselves to, to be different because people might not like them, or it might not be perfect. It’s kind of like the perfectionism thing. Like, so when you work with women entrepreneurs in particular, developing a personal brand, what are some of the things that they have to overcome from that socialization to allow them to be differentiated with a brand?

Lauren Bayne:

Yeah, no, it’s, it’s. Right, we’re. I don’t, I don’t know if it’s. I don’t know, numbers we should get stats on, like, how many women are groomed from an early age to be liked. You know, it’s, it’s all the way back to like my grandma’s days where it’s like, you know, be quiet, sit down, look pretty, say yes, ma’am, do what you’re told, you know. So, like, there is a lot of unraveling we’ve had to do as a generation to kind of change that, that role because it makes it really hard then to own who you are authentically if you aren’t perfect or if you do hear negative feedback about you. You know, being completely confident and just loving yourself is something I think, yes, stereotypically, a lot of women really do suff.

Lauren Bayne:

So, when it comes to the personal branding space and then especially with entrepreneurs, there is a lot of like, confidence that has to go along with it. And you know, even as somebody who does this for my clients, I, I struggle with it sometimes. And so that’s just your inner love for yourself. It’s the ability to self-love all your curves and all your imperfections and everything that makes you ‘you’. And so, once you have that, though, once you can truly say, I don’t care if I’m liked and I don’t care how many people are engaging with me, and I’m just going to keep going and keep going and doing what I know is right and not let the marketplace bend me in a different direction. And that you have, you’re surrounding yourself by mentors that you trust and people that can say, yeah, you know, maybe you need to bend a little bit here, but don’t sacrifice yourself then. I think it makes personal branding so much easier. So, there is a lot of growth that happens with people that are like, I want to be a personal brand.

Lauren Bayne:

I am going to be out there, and I am going to be known for something, and I am going to leverage my reputation and service of my offerings. But it’s confidence, just 101, to say, this is who I am, take it or leave it. And if I post something and nobody likes it or I get a negative comment, that’s okay. Those people are entitled to that. And I’m going to stay true to me and delete the negative comment.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, you know, I’ve found Lauren over the years just, you know, with my own kind of five startups, mentoring so many other founders and now investing in female founded companies, primarily that at the earlier stages sometimes you don’t really know who your ideal customers are yet, you know, for your product and service. And so many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of saying, oh, it’s for everybody. And maybe it could be for everybody eventually, but it never is like to begin with. And so sometimes you just don’t really know. So, there’s this delicate balance between, okay, trying to find your ideal customers, but also showing up as the right person for your ideal customer. So. So people get stuck in that trap and it sort of immobilizes them. Take me through a process or a methodology for how people can best figure that out. I think a lot of women get trapped there.

Lauren Bayne:

In particular, I think the formula for entrepreneurialism, and I’ve even been rewiring myself over the past year, especially since I’ve been working in products and services, is you come up with your widget, you know, your ‘what’, your product and your service, and you’re like, oh, yeah, I’m going to do this. And to your point, you think you know who it’s for because you’re like, yeah, I mean, people will like this, this is cool. Everyone can use this widget; everyone can have this service. But with personal branding especially, and the way, you know, I was taught over this last year is not starting with your what and not even starting with your why, but Starting with your who is almost the most important ingredient before you open your doors. Once you know your who, everything shapes after that. So, if you’re, if you come up with the widget first though, and that’s your idea, and you’re like, oh, I just have this thing of this thing, then stop yourself and think like, wait, who, who am I serving? Same with your personal brand. Who is my avatar? Who is the person that I want to take my unique gifts and exploit in service of others? If that’s. That to me is a quote by a guy named Larry Winget.

Lauren Bayne:

And it’s so beautiful and it’s so simple to me that if that’s what we’re put here to do in our life is to go to school and learn who we are and discover who we are and find our unique skill set, our unique gifts, then figure out a way to exploit them in service of others. It could be a boss, it could be a corporate, you can be an employee. You’re giving your service to the boss and that company you’re at. But my unique gifts are now being in service of others. Then you always know who your who is and then you can back everything out from there. If you figure out your calling and who you’re supposed to serve, like you just said, investing in female founded companies, that’s really specific and narrowing and niching down is what we need to be doing more of, especially in the land now that we are in, of so much choice. Choice and so much opportunity and needing our lives curated by influencers because there’s just too many choices.

Lauren Bayne:

Once you find your who, that is to me, the, the number one thing. And then from there you can just base everything around it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, start with the who. Some people say start with the why. You know, like your mission, you know, start with your what. You’re. I mean, there’s so much like.

Lauren Bayne:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

So much advice out there.

Lauren Bayne:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

That it’s a little bit immobilizing. So, what if you’re someone who’s multifaceted? Okay, so like especially you’ve done a lot of different things in your life, you have a lot of different expertise. You potentially have a product that has a number of different Personas and maybe those Personas are somewhat contrary, or your product serves different parts of say, an ecosystem. Then what?

Lauren Bayne:

Yeah, well, back to personal brand. I just had a client right now named John and part of my process is I go through kind of three Steps. So, your brand essence is like more of your strategic positioning, how you show up, what is the essence of what you’re trying to share. I really get to know who you are, what you’re all about. That then moves into brand exposure, expression. And that’s how I take the essence and then visually and verbally express it. And so, what does that look like from like brand identity and a possible website? Like what, what are, what lane are we in as far as the expression of this? And then the client can say, yes, this is it there, this is not that.

Lauren Bayne:

This client, John, for example, he mainly 80% of his business was serving college graduates. And so, what he does magnificently now in this stage of his career is he really helps college kids figure out what they’re going to do with their degree and where they’re going to go. And it’s more than career coaching. It’s a little bit more about like helping his line that I wrote him navigate your next. And so, it worked really well. College kids were his market, but he was like, but I also serve mid-career people. Like this is what I also do. I work with these mid-career people that are escalating into an elevation into the C suite.

Lauren Bayne:

And then it got really deep on all the different ways that he does that. Then he said, but I also help people sell their businesses and I actually help, you know, CEOs kind of go on to their next level. But before, it’s simpler now that I’ve already boiled it down. But in the beginning they felt like three very different markets. They felt like three different audiences. I was also kind of pushing back to say, well that sounds like mostly your expertise is in college kids. And we could go all in on that and think about this and this and this. But he didn’t want to leave anybody out.

Lauren Bayne:

And so, I was determined to figure out how he could do it all. So ultimately, when I sat down and really looked at everybody he served, I could see the thread throughout. It is that he helped all three of those markets navigate their next Whether you’re pivoting into the C suite or you’re pivoting out and selling your business, or you’re pivoting out of college, his methodology that I developed for him works for all of those audiences. So, what might seem like really disparate products and might not serve everyone, I would probably argue, and I could be wrong, but I can usually find the thread with all of it so that it all comes back to that umbrella brand at the top. You know, are you a house of brands or a branded house? You might be Hilton. And Hilton has a ton of different properties underneath it that are very different and serve different people and different budgets and have different brand identities as well. Or you could be more like, what if we’re in the hotel analogy, the graduate hotels, all the graduate hotels are in college cities, and they all are very much decorated differently. They’re for the college city in the town.

Lauren Bayne:

But you know, you’re in a graduate hotel when you walk in, because they’ve strung their brand ethos through all of it. So that. And that’s usually where I land more of the personal brand. So, I would just say what you might think are separate actually might not be because you’re the person at the top that thought it all up. You know, so there’s probably a reason and there’s probably a thread throughout all of it. And that’s usually what I say is the brand essence, period. It’s uncovering your unicorn is what I say there.

Melinda Wittstock:

It was a very self-interested question, I have to say, because say in the case of my company Podopolo, okay, so we’re serving podcast listeners, helping them to discover podcasts. They may not have others connect with each other and such, but we’re helping podcasters get discovered and grow their audiences. There are all kinds of different types of podcasters in podcasting for different reasons. Then there are advertisers who really want to connect with the right podcast and the right advertisers. So, like who I’m being when I’m talking to each one of those constituents, all of which have different needs underneath all of those as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

And then you add to it the fact that we’re innovating in technology and AI so there’s a lot of stuff in there, and if I was going to have like a personal brand, what is that? It’s confusing, right?

Lauren Bayne:

It is. And I can’t take you through a micro essence exercise right now, but I would probably dig into your why as much as I said, you’re. We’ve already talked about your who. You already have established businesses serving certain markets and constituents, as you said. But I would probably go back to, like, why are you doing this for podcasters? Why are you doing this for female founders? I would be able to see, see, like, in the end, what your uniqueness is, and that’s. And you are sharing that through these deliverables. So, like, for me, my why, like, why I do this is because I love dreamers. I love people that think big and dream big and go out and want to use their gifts and try to service other people.

Lauren Bayne:

And so that’s why I ended up leaving, like, a big agency culture, because I didn’t want to serve CMOs. I wanted to serve the founders, like, all the brands I was working with. I wanted to talk directly with Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines, you know, I wanted to talk directly to the. The guy that owned Benzoil at the time, you know, and so when I was working with smaller businesses and entrepreneurs, that’s where my. I lit up. Like, I loved working with the pizza chain company in Austin that had pizza restaurants all over to help them get their pizza out to the world. Like, that’s what lights me up. And so, when I switched over to personal branding and I started seeing that, oh, all these people love transformation, transforming other people’s lives.

Lauren Bayne:

I mean, that’s essentially what you’re doing. You’re transforming female founders lives; you’re transforming podcasters lives. And the way you do that is through AI and through your investment. I don’t know enough about you to know, like, through your investment strategies, you know, so the way I’m information, it’s…

Melinda Wittstock:

About transformation and it’s about empowerment.

Lauren Bayne:

Exactly. And that’s kind of what we’re all doing. And that’s what’s so interesting about my job is, like, every single one of my clients is promising transformation in some way or another, as am I. But the deliverable and the way we do that is like the skill set and the expertise. Like, I’m not Like such a branding person and so into websites and like I love website. I eat it up and all that. Like I do. I love that deliverable and that ends up being what I am using.

Lauren Bayne:

Now I’ve done all kinds of things in the advertising space, but the reason I chose that is because that’s how people show up first and that’s what people need and that’s what the dream dreamers are so excited about. And then it just sets the tone for what they’re trying to sell and share with their audience. But really what I’m that tethers back to is like I just love being the conduit of helping people share their dreams with the world or helping people in general. And I do that this way. So, for you, I would probably see that your big overarching brand is that you love helping people in this space and we would have to get into it a little bit more, get discovered. I mean you’re getting podcasters discovers, you’re getting female founders, brands get discovered. So, like is your thing you’re known for discovery? I don’t know, I’d have to look into your other brands. But you also want to think about the one word usually that you want to be known for.

Lauren Bayne:

Like Lewis Howes is, has the school of greatness. He’s probably known for greatness. And Brene Brown’s known for vulnerability. And Gary Vee right now is known for attention. It used to be something different, but like what is that one thing that you kind of can rally around and be known for. And so that’s something I try to do with my brands as well is usually have some kind of creative brand promise line tag your, your just do it of Nike, you know, your slogan or motto, rally cry. And then visually have something that makes you stand out that you can own as well so that you can be known for that. So, like eventually will John, the example I gave early be known for like navigation and like, oh, he’s the guy that helps you navigate your necks.

Lauren Bayne:

Like, like will he use that and market that in a way that he’s known. Then he’s done. Then he’s done what I’ve hopefully instructed all my clients to do. Well, like use your sticky branding items, use that thing you’re known for and then just use it all the time. You want to saturate the market with that so people know about that. And it’s not that Gary Vee’s running around saying, I mean he did. He has an attention a book about it, I believe. And then he Started stamping it on a lot of his videos, and then you just get known for that thing.

Lauren Bayne:

But he already was known for stuff.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, you’re really talking about simplicity and repetition.

Lauren Bayne:

Right?

Melinda Wittstock:

It has to be authentic. People just know. People can just tell whether something’s authentic or not. Right.

Lauren Bayne:

So, yeah, it’s marketing lingo. Otherwise, it’s just like elevate, go to the next level. It’s. It’s language and words that just everyone’s seen and it just kind of. But you just get blurs, and you just blend in a little bit. Now, there are definitely a lot of people that could say, well, I’ve been doing that for years and I’m really well known, and I have a really great business. And, yeah, that means your reputation has preceded your branding. And maybe it wasn’t necessarily a must have to have you be successful.

Lauren Bayne:

But for the majority of the people I work with, they’re going to market for the first time in a new way that most of my clients have worked for a really long time or have a business that they’ve had for a while, and they’re pivoting and growing. I just signed a new client yesterday who’s had a gym for 10 years, and the methodology they teach at their gym is actually what they’re more. That they want to be more known for, so they need to actually sell that methodology now. They want to do it through a course and have a community, but they also have a keynote speech they can do on it, and they already have a podcast, but they’ve never packaged it all up as a brand. And so that’s what I’m going to be doing for them. And that’s usually where I’m at with most people. And so, they don’t already have a reputation that they’re known for. They’re known for that.

Lauren Bayne:

That item, that gym, you know, and they want to be known more for their methodology and how they teach people. So, yeah, yeah, that.

Melinda Wittstock:

That makes a lot of sense. So, tell me more about what made you really want to go out on your own as an entrepreneur yourself and build your own business around this.

Lauren Bayne:

This is a long story, so cut me off. I start talking too long. I Came out of school with my advertising degree, worked at the biggest agency here in Austin, Texas, was doing great, making big brand commercials. Southwest Airlines AT&T Chili’s, like Big National, Fortune 500 brands. And I was doing great. And I was about 25, 26 years old and I started reading this book called Quarter Life Crisis, which is funny to think about that that’s actually a thing, but it was. And that was kind of where I kicked off, even personal development. I was reading self-help books from my mid-20s, and I just ate it up.

Lauren Bayne:

I loved it. I love the, the idea that we could always be a better version of ourselves. And just working, working on myself was always something I was passionate about. So, while I was doing that, 911 happened. And it was the first time in my life that I’d ever had anything major like that really hit me as an adult and it really shook me. It really made me think about life and the time we spend here and how much time we might have. And I went into work, and we didn’t have the Internet. We didn’t really even know what was going on.

Lauren Bayne:

I had no connection to New York, Manhattan. There, there was nothing there necessarily personally for me, but it definitely was this, this big record screech in my life that I look back on that was very pivotal for me. I went into work, and I talked about it with my creative director and I was just like, I don’t even know how to go back to work right now and what’s going on? And so, he’s like, yeah, I know it’s terrible, but those Chili’s baby back rib table tents, we’re going to do new headlines for those. And so, I’m going to need you to write five new ones by the end of the day. And we’re doing like this $2 off value message. And so, you need to write something about saving money. Cool. And he walked down to my cubicle, and I never looked at advertising this way, nor my creative or anything, but I was like, oh my gosh, I’m just selling ribs for a living.

Lauren Bayne:

And I was like, I never thought about the fact that my gifts and what I was doing was nothing bigger than just going and eating ribs at Chili’s. And that’s not a bad thing. It was just for me at the time I was like, this is not what I want to be doing. I will also say that my mentor and the owner, one of the co-founders of the agency, Roy Spence, was really trailblazing purpose-based branding at the time. He even wrote A book. It’s not what you sell, it’s what you stand for. And I absolutely loved it. It helped me fall in love with the industry I was in, because it made me realize that people like Herb Kelleher with Southwest Airlines wasn’t just starting a discount airline.

Lauren Bayne:

He was really doing it to help grandparents go see their grandkids and to help people be able to afford to experience things on the other side of the country. And so that’s when Roy is like, you’re not just in the discount airline business. You’re in the freedom business. You’re giving people freedom to move about the country. Which led to one of their taglines, ding. You’re now free to move about the country. You know, so that kind of way of looking at brands and business for me made it feel like more purposeful, more altruistic. And so that example I gave you about Chili’s, that we could have easily reframed that to, like, now more than ever, you need to gather with family and friends around a hot plate of ribs, and you can do it for $2 off.

Lauren Bayne:

You know, I. I could have gotten there, but what it did was it catapulted me forward into this place of, like, I want to be doing very purposeful work, and I want to work with brands that are also have a stronger mission to what they’re doing. So. And then. Then I also fell in love with entrepreneurialism. I just loved it. I loved founders, and so I would start businesses, and then I had kids, and then life got in the way. And then I go back to an agency, and so I won’t take you through all the different things I’ve done over the years.

Lauren Bayne:

But ultimately, where it landed me about a year ago was I’d worked for 25 years reflecting on what do I want to do next. I felt called to pivot. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. And so I just started going to Masterminds and really investing in professional development, which I had never done before. It was always more like personal development. And I found this community of people building their thought leadership into this personal brand mastermind. And I was like, I want to build my personal brand. I want to figure out what this is, what is my thought leadership.

Lauren Bayne:

So, while I was peeling back the layers of me, I was surrounding myself with all these people that I was like, wait, you’re the exact. You def your founders, too? You’re just founders of your one-on-one service or you’re founders of your thought leadership? You’re sharing. And these are just all the same people, but sharing it in a different way versus the traditional entrepreneurial product or service. And so when I saw them go to market, I was. I was feeling kind of sad. I was like, you’re. You’re just buying templates and you’re just kind of like putting everything in the same space everyone else is, and you’re just picking fonts just because they look good and you’re just kind of decorating yourself. And then you have some pretty photos, and the photos look like you.

Lauren Bayne:

But actually, I’ve met you, and that’s such a businessy stock photo look. And I don’t know. And so, I just started wondering, like, could these people show up and be branded the exact same way I would a pizza restaurant or the running store in my town, you know, or back all the way back to the Fortune 500 companies? So that’s the long story of what started making me decide, like, oh, what if I went all in on personal brands? And, and it was an experiment, and I just started getting clients organically, and I’m up to like, 11 brands I’ve launched in the last six months. And they’re all beautiful and unique and different and distinct, and I’m so proud of what I’m building, and it’s just been really satisfying, and it’s made me feel like I’m doing that purposeful work that I wanted to do ever since I was 25.

Melinda Wittstock:

So exciting. And so, tell me a little bit about your vision and your ideal clients and who you most like to work with. It sounds like you’re mostly at the kind of earlier stages of really developing the brand. Is that right? Tell me about your clients.

Lauren Bayne:

So, my clients are all professionals that have already kind of accomplished. So, they’re more like accomplished professionals that have achieved about. I’d say most of them have worked for about 15 years or so, and they either are learning more about personal branding now and are within a company that they see the value of becoming a thought leader about something that might tie back to the company or that could serve their company they’re working for, or they’re coaches and consultants that are now starting this side of their business and they had never done it before. So, they’re leaving maybe a long professional history that they now want to use that expertise that they’ve cultivated over the last 20 years or so. And they’re going to be a coach or a consultant or I have a client right now who published a book, and she had been a really well-known blogger for a long time and, and so she started realizing what one of her strengths was building community. And so, she wrote a book about it and that’s now growing into her personal brand as a thought leader and a speaker. And so now she has a few more of, you know, I guess, IPs that she can own. And so, she really wants to own a brand to go along with that.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Lauren Bayne, personal brand expert.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Lauren Bayne:

But I will also say I’m kind of a little bit of a disruptor right now in this market. There aren’t a lot of people, people really looking at personal brands through the lens. I feel like I am, it’s, it’s bigger than just like, oh, I can design your website. You know, this is a really holistic360 look at how you show up. And it’s also very distinctive and conceptual. I’m a creative director at the end of the day, so I’m, I’m not going to come up with ideas that are just going to be like pretty design. This is, this is something a little bit deeper than that. And you know it.

Lauren Bayne:

When you see my work, my work kind of sells itself. So, the vision for where this goes is just I want to help as many people as possible. And so, the more people that I can just serve is, is the dream. And then there is this part of me that wonders if more people from the advertising world, because I’m not. There’s not very many that I know that are creatives that did what I did, that are now in this space. If I can create a space for other creatives like me to get a bunch of personal brand clients themselves and use the same teachings that were all taught in our portfolio schools and apply them to people, then that could be another way I scale this business. But right now, it’s just about working with really amazing people. I love employing my awesome work, my remote workforce across the country.

Lauren Bayne:

I have designers in LA and Memphis and Chicago and my assistants in Manhattan and my bookkeepers in Dallas. Like, I love it so much. I love that my, my team is all over and we, we meet on zoom and meet up sometimes in person. But yeah, just growing and giving people a place to just do exactly what they were meant to do is, is what I love doing. So, like all my staff meetings, I’m like, are we all loving what we’re doing still? Is anybody be asked to do anything that makes them cringe? I don’t want to create. I want to have this work environment where there’s no one’s complaining about their job, you know, because they’re all getting to do exactly what doesn’t feel like work to them.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, one of the things, there’s different types of companies. There are a lot of companies that are built around the brand, around the person, around the expertise. And obviously that, that, that is a, you know, a straightforward path. But I’ve seen a lot of people do that and then they decide they want to sell their business, and they can’t really without continuing to work because the brand value is all tied up in that person. And essentially they built something that cannot exist without them, so they can’t actually sell their business. And then there are other companies that, that, you know, are literally built for exit.

Melinda Wittstock:

So how do you advise around that to, to make sure that the founders actually have the option as they’re building their personal brand, they’re thinking far enough ahead that someday they will want to move on. Right. And they may want to have a wealth creating exit.

Lauren Bayne:

So, Apple with Steve Jobs isn’t there and Apple’s doing just… It carried on the legacy. Like if it was called computers by Steve Jobs, then yeah, maybe it wouldn’t have worked. But I, I would say that it’s the brand that you infuse every part of you into that should be a legacy, regardless if you are physically part of it. So, if your name is part of it, Kendra Scott Jewelry is Kendra Scott for that reason. And I know that if she were to ever exit that, that we will all know what her jewelry looks like because she started that as her legacy. Whether or not they need her, like operationally is different to me from brand.

Lauren Bayne:

Like as long as the people that then take it and buy it carry out what that founder started. Yes. You don’t, you don’t have to be a part of that anymore. And I would argue that your name makes it even more valuable because of that as long as the people you’re selling it to carry on what you established. So again, like I, I think that right now, depending on how you want to market your service, like I talked to you earlier about a new idea that I have that’s unrelated, but I’ve put the name of this company, which makes more sense than it being me, I’ve put by Lauren Bayne, and I am not anybody. There is no reason that I would attach that name. And it is attached there very strategically, because that gives people the confidence of knowing, because this is what people want nowadays.

Lauren Bayne:

Because we can, because of social media, we’ve democratized how we have access to founders. And so now people want to do business with people. And it just is instant trust. It’s instant credibility. And in the, in the instant trust and credibility can only go as far as your reputation allows it to be. So, I do think people that want to remove their name or remove their face from it could be because they feel like it might be a liability or that it doesn’t really help in the beginning. Like it could, maybe some people think it could even hurt. But I, I’m now on this other side of people being like, oh, I should have, I should have brought my name into the business way earlier because it just helps people know they’re doing business with me and they’re doing business with a human.

Lauren Bayne:

And so, I think that there’s so much value in that. Is there a level of trying to think of, oh, privacy? I think that there could be a level of privacy that you give up by doing that. Because, yeah, you are going to share stuff, and people are going to know your name and they can go look you up and find you. And so, there are definitely. If you have privacy concerned and you don’t want any of that to be part of your business, then, yes, you probably don’t want to be a personal brand. But for those that know that one day this is all going to be over, and it’s not going to really matter and just leave a legacy with what you, how you showed up in the world, that’s more what I advocate for. So, I would just say that your name being attached to it or your face is just establishing what kind of brand you are, what your ethos is, what your mission and your values are and what you stand for so that your customer knows, okay, that’s who the person is behind the brand. And now I trust it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Beautiful. Well, Lauren, I want to make sure that people know how to find you and work with you because I think everybody needs advice on personal branding. I mean, for some people it just comes, comes naturally, but for a lot of people do actually really struggle with this. So, what’s the best way?

Lauren Bayne:

I offer free 30 minute, what I call dream catcher calls. So essentially a discovery call, but I call it a dream catcher call because I just think the idea of those, you know, Native American dream catchers in the window, I think they’re technically supposed to like filter out bad juju, but I, I use it more as a way to say, I’m going to catch those dreams, and I want to hear them, and I want to see what you’re trying to accomplish. And then let’s talk about it. And you can book one of those on my website. And my website is laurenbain.com and that’s the best way to reach me right now. And I can talk you through stuff, see where you’re at on your journey. See, you know, if this is something you want to do and talk about the services I offer, and we can just go from there. But at the end of the day, like, my heart is truly in helping people find that direction and be able to exploit their uniqueness and their gifts and service of others.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Lauren Bayne:

I appreciate it. It was so fun.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Lauren Bayne is a personal branding expert. Take advantage of her free 30-minute consult at LaurenBayne.com.

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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