Binge Factor Media

As the podcasting world continues to grow, the one thing you can forever hold on to is yourself. Who you are will continue to keep you apart from the crowd. Your own unique voice will make you stand out. That is why it is very important that as you start, you keep in mind your personal branding. In this episode, Tonya Eberhart and Michael Carr of Be BOLD Branding join Tracy Hazzard to discuss how you can find your own brand and get your message across. They tap into the ways personal branding can affect your content and marketing, narrowing down to attracting not only listeners but also finding the right guests. Follow along to this insightful conversation, where you learn how you can build a brand that is equal to your greatness.

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

How Personal Branding In Podcasting Sends A Message That Attracts And Converts More With Tonya Eberhart And Michael Carr Of Be BOLD Branding

In this episode, I have Tonya Eberhart and I’m Michael Carr here from Be BOLD Branding Podcast. I’d love to talk branding because of one of the things that I say so consistently in my business and when I’m advising podcasters starting out. Even once you’re established, my question to you is, “Who are you going to talk to and how are you going to get that message across to them in a way that they’re going to understand? How does that relate?” Part of that is branding.

Branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room but it is also what you’re putting out there because you’re crafting that. If you’re not crafting that from the beginning, you’re not thinking about it. You’re haphazardly putting that out there. Tonya Eberhart and Michael Carr are international bestselling authors. They’re partners in BrandFace and hosts of the Be BOLD Branding podcast, where they interview experts and entrepreneurs who have made one bold move that help them gain differentiation and recognition in their space.

Now, Be BOLD Branding has more than 100 episodes and is top 3 global rank in its category. Tonya and Michael have helped inspire podcasters, coaches, sales professionals, and creators in 5 countries and 45 states to attract more and convert more through the power of personal branding. Their mantra is, “People don’t do business with a logo. They do business with a person.” Let’s learn it from Tonya and Michael directly.

Tonya and Michael, thank you so much for being here. I love that I get to talk branding. I don’t get to talk branding with many people. There are a few great branding experts who I will let on the show because you and I have talked about philosophy already that so much of branding is that logo focus. It’s just all wrong.

Amen to that.

Why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about your branding philosophy?

I’ll start with this one. Our branding philosophy is the story behind the brand. It truthfully is why you’re doing what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for. When we brand somebody, we look at answering five critical questions that we believe every brand should answer and everything else becomes this ecosystem around the answers to these five questions. It’s 1) Who do you serve, 2) How do you serve them, 3) What qualifies you to serve them, 4) How does it make their life better, and 5) What makes you different from everyone else also trying to serve that same customer?

I love that you said that. For those of you who read a lot of The Binge Factor and possibly a lot of Feed Your Brand, you’ve heard me do my description exercise with you before, which is our way of writing 4,000 character descriptions. I’ve said it in probably 20% of our episodes, so you had to have read of this before. That is the essence of it. We don’t do it in five questions. We do it in three but it’s the same things. We want to get across your personal story brand in your description of your show. It’s the same model. I love that you do that. I love that those are the questions.

We appreciate coming on. Thank you for your kind words and for letting us on, Tracy. We love meeting of the minds like this because we truly feel like so much out there is done wrong but rather than focus on that, it’s like, “What’s the right way to do it?”

Like your three questions, I have five questions. That approach also gives you a massive amount of focus. I’ve been an entrepreneur for many years. The problem with most people, no matter what industry they’re in, podcasting to law and care, is a lack of focus on the growth of their business. When you dug your brand in, you get that focus as part of the exercise. It comes peripherally with building that. That’s why it’s so much more than just a logo.

What’s the story about you two starting a show? How did that come about for you? It starts as a video cast because you’re video first.

Here’s a fun story for you. We started years ago. The reason we wanted to do this was to put our clients at ease and let people know. It’s those people that were intimidated by building a brand and they were not sure that’s what they wanted to do. They’re not sure they wanted to put themselves out there that much. We thought, “We’re going to do something called Fearless Friday. We’re going to show them why you should be fearless about this, because your brand is you and you should be proud of it. The brand should be built to equal the great person that you are.” We started that but it was awful.

It was horrific.

It was so terrible. In fact, we took off all those old episodes where Michael’s in the car and I’m in the office.

I was on a phone in a parking lot on the road with a towel to block out the sun.

It was like the old-school podcasting thing. I remember, it took me about a year where I was giving lectures constantly saying, “You don’t have to look like this.” It was a picture of a couple of guys in the car with their iPhones and the towel or in the closet. That was the other one.

We thought then done is better than perfect. Back then there was no such thing as this awesome big home studio when we first started or there was but wasn’t mainstream like it is now.

We would speak at like the voiceover conference and things like that with those types of podcasting equipment were more prevalent at the time, especially with voiceover work. When people were traveling, you would set up in your hotel room and stuff like that. Even then, we didn’t think about applying it to our podcast. We’re still on our iPhones on a holder in the car. We then realized the things that so many other great podcasters figured out. If you say Fearless Friday, you can only release on Friday effectively. You can only shoot on Fridays, so like, “We got to make this non-time specific and help our listenership and stuff.” We changed a lot of things.

I love that about podcasting. It’s one of my favorite things is to see how someone’s show shifted over time. I know you deleted some of those episodes, which I don’t encourage. I say if people want to come back and find some of your Fearless Fridays, you should let them. If they’re going to consume that much of you backward through the catalog, you should let them.

We had some good ones. We did some hang gliding and things like that.

The devoted listeners or the ones who want the information will consume it and they won’t care. They’ll come along with you. I love that you shifted it because my favorite part about podcasting is how flexible it is. It flexes with your brand because this is the one thing that I learned about branding all along. Branding isn’t a stake in the ground. It’s not a line in the sand. I don’t say, “This is my brand,” and it’s done because you’re not done.

That’s true. Especially with a personal brand, you grow. You’re like, “You are your brand.” What we like to say is a brand is an entire ecosystem. It’s not just a photo, a logo, and a tagline. It’s so much more than that and you do evolve. It might be a great word for a brand. It evolves like you change and evolve.

Personal Branding In Podcasting: A brand is an entire ecosystem. It’s not just a photo, logo, and tagline. It’s so much more than that.

Tony said, “It doesn’t just change the way people see you. It changes the way yourself.” We’re always a work in progress if we’re doing the right things. I’m the abundant life broker. That is my tagline. That is my brand identifier and it took me many years of business to figure out that’s what I was and able to live up to that. It can mold and change with me. It’ll never change but the look, feel and how that story progresses will be updated.

Also, our business has changed too. We start out maybe a little more general then we narrow down our audiences. One of the things that you have done so well is that you’ve found that you work well with real estate professionals, home improvement, and entrepreneurs. Those are your areas of niche in terms of personal branding. Is there a reason that you found that it works better in those areas?

That’s who we are.

We went by default too. I didn’t realize when I met Tonya. I had a real estate company and I hired Tonya to be my marketer. She had a turnkey company at the time and I thought I needed marketing. She taught me I needed branding. I knew how to market. I had already been doing it for years, two decades’ worth. I was a senior vice president and we spent $20 million a year in advertising. I knew how to do it. I didn’t realize what I needed was a brand. I also didn’t realize she had written a book about it and that she was putting me through that loop.

All of that worked so fantastically from a real estate company and we still employed those principles to this day. Now we do it with my other agents. She asked me to come on board and start what is BrandFace now. We naturally went after real estate agents because I was so successful at it and my agents were so successful at it. We could very easily show it to other people. We realized it’s profitable. Those principles don’t change no matter what you do, even podcasting, law, and care. It doesn’t matter, lawyers, doctors or auctioneers.

It’s so important that you’re getting across who you are. That’s the part that if there’s not a match between who I am and my audience, then I’m going to spend a lot of time making phone calls, doing quotations, and doing things that are qualifying. The right brand can already qualify you. It saves a ton of time and that’s what you’ve hit on here. In an industry area, especially in real estate, “I need to find trust quickly. I need to find authority quickly. I need to get something accomplished quickly if I’m going to hire a real estate professional.”

All of those things have to happen quickly and there isn’t much better way to do that than to express that both visually and in the languaging you’re using in a brand. You’ve got that dialed in but this is the same thing that you probably applied in podcasting, differentiation. It’s making sure that you’re bold and standing out. That’s why you’re called Be BOLD Branding. It’s making sure that you’re standing out for who you are for that story that you were talking about before. Did you find it like there’s so much of this sameness going on in the podcasting?

We coined the term sea of sameness about a decade ago in the real estate world. That’s where we first noticed it because that’s where our focus was at the time then we realized, “We’re coaches and creators.” That’s who we should work with as well. A lot of those people ended up being podcasters because the greatest thing a coach or a creator can do is have their own podcast to express their expertise. From the very beginning, what we stand for is the differentiation. You’ve got to show how you’re different from everyone else because better is subjective. Different is inarguable.

This is a perfect time for me to hit on your binge factor. What I found was so unique about your show is the languaging that you’ve utilized and the advice that you give within your show. That is unusual because a lot of times, we get this same old model in podcasting where everybody’s doing an interview or topics and they’re running down a checklist of, “I got to ask these questions and I’ve got to do it this way.”

You never deviate from your key focus on who you’re talking to. The questions that you ask and the topics that you choose are unique in and of themselves because they are focused at giving that unique listener the answer they need. That focus is so hard to maintain in the podcasting industry but it is serving. I guarantee you’re serving your business well.

That focus is hard to do in any part of business, period. That’s the key. I think differentiation is the anchor and focus is the chain. You got to have it in it because if you don’t, you’re going to spin wheels or not get anywhere.

You’re doing too much. That’s what I think. In design, I called it the shotgun approach. It’s like I’d have clients who would want me to design hundreds of products. I designed over 800 office chairs in three years but if a client or one of their customers didn’t ask for that, I could go in with five chairs knowing which one should be on that shelf and I could get them to pick it. If I could get them to do that targeted focused approach, that product would outsell the other’s tenfold.

Do you know what the analogy is? If any of your readers have kids, when our kids were tiny, you put them in a highchair. You put the bib on them. If you open up the can of peas, all our kids love peas. You poured out the whole can of peas, and they’d eat three peas. If you gave them three peas at a time, they’d eat the whole can. We’re not any different as adults.

Too many is too many. I love that thinking. That is about focus and refinement. I call it curation a lot here. It’s curating our content to be right for our brand and in being right for our brand, it’s right for our audience. That’s what you’ve done so well. That’s your true binge factor. We need some new branding advice for podcasters. It’s a different day and age as when you started that you were saying, “The technology was difficult.” There was so much else to concentrate on, not only that sea of sameness that you referred to.

I love that term. That’s a great term. The sea of sameness is there but that sea of sameness is full of junk. It is full of podcasts that podfaded. There are over 2.5 million shows and tens of millions of episodes but 2.5 million shows and only 300,000 of them are actively posting and providing advice and providing quality. How do we brand ourselves and stand out differently now?

First of all, if you can answer those five questions we talked about earlier, that puts you on the right path because then you know who it is you’re talking to. You can’t be talking to everyone. You can’t possibly be. When you know who it is you’re talking to, then you take life experiences into play. For us, we’ve gone through hundreds of clients, so I know what their objections are. We know what they’re thinking, their pain, and their joy, so we ride that wave. For instance, on our solo topic, we’re going to be talking about why branding should come first.

I’m so glad you said that. Please come first. Listen to them.

Think about it this way, Tracy. If you don’t know who it is you’re talking to, how on earth do you know where to market and what to put in your marketing? Your brand dictates who it is you’re talking to or the other way around. One can come before the other but the point is you need to know who that ideal customer is you’re trying to draw in.

If you know that person, then content becomes so much easier. A lot of people try to cram a lot of topics into one podcast when they should break it up one at a time and give them a peas at a time, as Michael says. You have three peas at a time. That’s important and staying so focused on that. I know a lot of people with podcasts and they’ll interview anyone.

Lucky for us, everyone has a story. We can figure out, what is your story? Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about your brand. Why are you doing what you’re doing? Who are you doing it for? How’s it changing their life? Some of those things are important but even at that, we don’t interview everyone. We’re very selective about that too and getting even more selective as we move forward. As you said, the ability to change is important.

I agree with that brand first model. It’s okay for a show or a brand to shift over time. We talked about that already but if you don’t have that focus of where you’re starting from, you don’t have an idea of who you’re talking to. Some of the most successful podcasts that I’ve heard had a vision in mind for who was listening on the other end, even if there was nobody there yet. They had this idea of who that listener was and it comes across from the beginning of the show in a better way.

We’re mass media, so we’re on a podcast. Everybody wants to be Joe Rogan. We all want the domains of listeners. The fact of the matter is, every time we do a show, every podcaster should be talking to one person because it might be one person that needs it, and that one person is the one that matters. That one multiplies over time but the focus works both ways, we believe. Niching down to who you’re talking to, entering your podcast in a mindset that you’re talking to that one person, it comes across better to people.

It comes right across the mic and that intimacy and into the way the advice is. We should segue into some of our three questions that we do with every guest that I have on the show here because this is some of that thinking is. I’ve now got this focus of one listener. How do I grow it into more? What did you do that you thought was successful for you and worked for you?

We stayed focused on the things that we know people struggle with regard to branding. First of all, the biggest mistake people make is marketing before the brand is built. No wonder that happens because there are so many people out there these days that say, “Don’t worry about it. Your customer will decide what your brand is. Do what you do.” We’re going, “Really?” Please don’t give them that advice because the greatest thing you can do is influence how you want people to view you. That’s one thing you can do.

Personal Branding In Podcasting: The biggest mistake people make is marketing before the brand is built.

That’s critically important what you said there. Too often, it’s somebody who’s selling you something prematurely that is telling you that advice. If you don’t understand where that advice is coming from, then it’s not working.

Tonya used to be in a radio business and she’d sell an ad to people that would be their own voice or whatever. They’d build in their own brand, then they’d come to her. They’d call her on the phone and say, “I’m tired of my commercial. Cut it off. I listened to this radio station too. I’m sick of hearing my voice that run the same thing over again.”

She’s like, “If you are sick of it, the people you’re trying to reach are now listening to it.” Tonya’s right, the repetitiveness is continually fighting with people like you to show the mass public what branding is because your business, our business, and the branding business are competing with people all the time like website builders will build your brand. You won’t. You’ll help me build a website that my brand will be on. You build websites. You don’t build brands.

That confuses the mass public because they’re like, “If I have a website, I have a brand. If I have a logo, I have a brand. If I have a tagline, I have a brand.” No, those are just parts of your ecosystem that you haven’t even started on yet. It’s easier for those of us that can stay focused on that because we’re still defining that. We’re still hammering into people that that is the definition.

The major listener growth strategy that you’ve hit on right there is that consistency and constancy. If you are doing that again and again and you’re not deviating from your brand message, then it’s going to come across. At some point, it’s going to hit that story like right there, that SEO. How many websites do SEO companies sell with zero branding experience? They say they’ll put a brand on it but when you check the references, you’d see that every single website looks the same.

We noticed that, first of all, in the real estate genre but it’s no different from any other genre.

They all look the same and they don’t realize it because they’re looking at it their own. They’re like, “I have a website. Look, I’m up.” They don’t look at it because they’re not in a housing complex where every house looks exactly the same. They’re not looking at them next to each other and website builders is counting on them that you won’t ever see that. You won’t ever notice but that’s happened to us. That’s why we ended up building websites in our business. We don’t build them often but if somebody has a brand, they have a brand or we won’t do it. If they have a brand and their website isn’t functioning, we’ll fix it for them.

We started doing that because we found that there were so many people that had non-functioning sites because someone would build it and would look pretty but they were all the same. We started getting people coming to us and we were like, “Do you realize that your website is the same as these ten speakers or these ten real estate professionals? They’re all the same structure. They have the same weaknesses.”

It made us easy to do our job, but I was like, “You got to fix your look,” and it was a problem. You can see why that website builder sells them that because otherwise, they’re going to be waiting months for them to go find a branding expert, go get it branded, or go figure it out themselves and they won’t.

That’s the key.

Most of the time, the truth is most people don’t understand there’s a big divide between branding and marketing. They see it all as encompassed into one thing. When somebody says, “Brand yourself through video. Brand yourself through this.” They’re selling a marketing tool. They’re not selling a brand.

Personal Branding In Podcasting: Most people don’t understand there’s a big divide between branding and marketing. When somebody says, “Brand yourself through video, brand yourself through this,” they’re selling a marketing tool. They’re not selling a brand.

That happened. I saw that as somebody did trailer videos. They look so amazing and they were super professional. There was branding involved in it. At least, that’s what everybody was told. Now that so much of the same group has gotten them, there are probably about 20 in the group who has them then we have a group of about 150, everyone realizes when they watch the video that they’re exactly the same. It only hurts you at the end of the day. It’s going to hurt your listener growth. It’s going to hurt your business growth. It’s going to hurt growth in general. The best way is to stay true to who you are, stay true to that brand, and stay true to that listener. That’s what you’re getting at.

Let’s talk about guesting because guesting has a significant growth factor for your show as well. We all want guests because we hope guests are going to bring more of the targeted audience to us. What do you do to select a good guest and make sure? I know you’re selective about it and you’ve gotten even more selective going forward. Tell everybody about your criteria here.

If I can answer a question that wasn’t asked, we learned the hard way because we’ve been podcasting long enough. There was no dating match platforms and things like that. We had an intern calling people, sending emails and typed letters. We did anything we could to try to get on any show that we possibly could get on.

We were attempting to get that in there because we recognized that we could come and talk to people. That was a direct correlation to our ideal customer because they had that listen. Thank goodness, people like Alex Sanfilippo come up with great ways for us to be able to do that. I’ll let Tonya pick up on that now because then that opened up a Pandora’s box.

It opened up the podcast swap, which we love. Where you go on my show, I go on your show. We love the podcast swap because we both have listeners, so it works out great. Going beyond that into the guests that you invite on your show, that selectiveness has now come out for you as well.

It had to.

This might be a little bit edgy but we want to invite people on that could be our ideal customer too because they have a story to share and yet their story may not be defined, developed and displayed correctly, which is what we’re known for. We have the opportunity to showcase their story. Also, talk to them about going through our program and becoming BrandFace.

The other thing is we want to make sure that we have somebody with a dialed in story. They may not have the brand out there, fully developed and displayed correctly yet but they do have a very intriguing unique story where it all begins. That’s what we want to pay attention to. We don’t care if they have 500,000 or 5 million social media followers.

That’s great if all you want to do with podcasting is make sure that you get your face out in front of as many people as possible. That’s not what it’s about for us. We want our face in front of the right people. That’s one of the characteristics we look at is, “Could they be a customer?” The other is, “Do they have a very compelling story, whether or not it’s built out yet?”

Personal Branding In Podcasting: You want your face in front of the right people. Ask yourself, “Could they be a customer?”

You’ve got to hold true to the lessons that you’re bringing to your show. That’s that curation that you’re doing so well.

One of those criteria is very important that our ideal customers on the listenership because in marketing overall, people say, “Newspaper’s dead.” We say, “Newspaper’s not dead if your customer is reading the newspaper.” Your brand needs to be on the newspaper if your customer is reading that newspaper. We follow that same very finite principle on podcasting too. We pay attention to who’s listening to their show because if it’s a car mechanic, we can help him with branding probably or her with branding but we’re not talking to the ideal customer at the end of that day. We are going to talk to entrepreneurs, coaches, speakers, podcasters, authors, and real estate.

Do you what’s so funny? We talked to a real estate video caster. I’m going to call them that because they’re not a podcaster now. They call themselves a podcaster but they have no podcast show. It’s all video. We’re trying to talk to them about why they haven’t syndicated it properly as a podcast. It’s because they believe the audience only watches. It came down to the fact that they only watch. I was like, “Do you understand that I know for a fact in the real estate industry that radio ads still do tremendously well to drive traffic to real estate professionals?”

I do radio on three different radio stations.

I’ve got some groups that do real groups like the REIS. They have all of those going on and they still advertise for their group on radio. I was like, “You’re missing a whole segment of the audience because you’re thinking only about what you like.”

How many people, even if it is a videopod type, video cast, or whatever but they’re just listening to it. I do it all the time in the car. I’m not watching it. I’m driving but I’m listening to it.

It’s being in all those formats.

You need to be on a true podcast platform where you’re listening because so many people listen.

Let’s talk about profitability before we go here. You talk about profitable for personal brands and I like to talk about profitable podcasting. Now the traditional model is what’s my return on investment? People think, “It’s going to be ads.” I can say less than 1% of all my guests will ever say ads. It’s never going to be the case here.

When you look at your podcasting at this time of year because we’re starting out 2023 together as we’re doing this interview. Although, it’ll air in 1 month or 2. I always look at what was my return on investment from 2022. Let’s reflect on that. What was the return on investment from podcasting for you? Do you see it as part of your profitability for your personal brand?

Podcasting brought us probably 60% of our business. It was in various different forms as well. Through podcasting, we’ve met collaboration partners. Alex Sanfilippo would be one of those. We got some clients from doing a collaboration webinar with him after we met him through podcasting. We did that with several other people as well. That’s one way we’ve utilized podcasting to meet the right people like that. We’ve also had several of our guests and hosts become our clients.

The other thing is we are exploring now sponsorships and not your typical ad buying because that’s pennies on the dollar folks. I used to be in the media world when internet ads first came out. It was like, “How many impressions does that ad get?” I’m thinking, “You are barking up the wrong tree. This has nothing to do with it.” It’s the same thing in podcasting. Don’t go for the pennies on the dollar groupings, bundle aggregates, and so forth.

Look for people that are going to be an asset. In other words, what we look for in a partner is, “What things might our clients need next after their brand is built? Do they need a social media company? Do they need a videography company? Do they need a website company? Those are the people that we look for to become partners and sponsorship partners for our podcast. There are a few ways that podcasting has brought us money and made it profitable for us.

Personal Branding In Podcasting: Look for people that actually are going to be an asset.

I’m so glad to hear that 60%. I think people underestimate the power of it. The other thing that most people don’t look at from a return on investment but I bet you found this to be the case, is that selling branding is hard. It is hard because it’s a little bit ethereal. There are lots of unknowns in the process. I bet you have less conversations than you used to have with prospective clients because of the podcast.

No doubt.

No question about it. It educates people and now when our staff gets on sales calls with those people, they’ll say, “I know my logo’s not my brand.” They’ll say things like that. “I know that a tagline in my photo in my logo is not my brand. I’ve realized it’s a lot more than that.” It’s like, “We’re off to a good start.”

We don’t have to go for education. We can go for the opportunity. Every year, I think about shifting my show and what’s next for it. What’s next for your show?

If you’d asked me this in 2022, I would’ve said, “We’re going to end up doing one guest and one solo.” That’s been working so well for us that I think we’re going to stay on that bend. One thing that you pointed out kindly as we started this and we’re in the process of is getting on Spotify and some of the other platforms that we’re not on yet. That’s simply out of lack of time. Sometimes you get so busy and those things have to be done but when we first started, we started on a video-only platform. We talked about that.

It wasn’t necessarily because we just watched video. It was, “We’re going to do this because it’s different.” At the time, everybody was doing audio and we thought, “They’ll zig right. We’ll zig left.” We did and then before you know it, so much time passes and we’ve missed huge opportunities on the audio-only platform. There you go. We’re still learning and evolving too.

It’s always a work in progress but I love the fact that you ask about the ROI because that’s so important. I would tell your audience, know your numbers and keep up with them because that is where your real growth is going to come from. When you look back and you say, “This came from this. I need to tweak this. I don’t need to mess with that,” that’s when you start to scale.

Not getting caught up though in the vanity of the numbers like, “I have 100,000 listeners.” Any of that doesn’t matter because if you’re speaking to a room of 50 people each week, that’s 50 people. I can’t get on the phone with that many in a week. It’s still way more than I can do one-on-one and so it’s still better.

Amen, it is. If you could get 50 people to listen to what you’re saying, that’s an incredible sales opportunity every time. Don’t get caught up on the big numbers. Get caught up on the right numbers.

Get caught up on the growth factor, what’s working, and which ones are resonating. I love that when people quote you back to you. That’s what they’re saying, “I know this. I’ve heard you say this.” That’s amazing. You know you have them. The sale is done.

One of the things we like to say about the right type of clients is, “People don’t need to know that you exist. The right people need to know why you exist.” That goes from way back in my media days when people said, “I have 50,000 impressions on that ad.” I thought, “I don’t want to impress 50,000 people. I want to talk to 50 who want to buy.”

I love that. Thank you both, Michael and Tonya for bringing people branding to the market and BrandFace principles to entrepreneurs everywhere.

Thank you, Tracy. It’s been a pleasure.

—

Again, Michael bring up such great points about the way we’re thinking about our brand, the way we think about where power personally outreaching our audience. Every part of those five questions that they have are so critical in the process of thinking things through. I don’t want you to get bogged down by this idea that brand needs to come first.

Brand thinking needs to come first because that’s the model that you’re going to go after. It doesn’t mean it can’t shift. I love that we talked about that because you don’t stay static. Your clients aren’t going to stay static. Your business isn’t going to stay static and your podcast is not going to stay static. It’s a dynamic thing in and of itself. To be able to test out and flex your branding through your podcast is a fabulous thing.

I talked to a longtime client. He’s got over 500 episodes, probably close to 600 by now. He’s been a client for over three years. He said to me that his podcast is going to shift for the next year and he’s going to be focused more on solo episodes and doing things that are deeply dived into the niche of his show. That’s a huge departure from where he was years ago and that’s okay. The model of your business and your brand can shift over time but your podcast could be a great testing ground for the brand perception resonance.

This is something that I say in addition to and I’m very sure, Tonya and Michael will agree with this. We can put what we want out there and craft our brand in the way that we think is perfect. It’s the right way we want to be perceived but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be received on the other end. Brand is completely perception and it is on us to make sure that we’re testing and that it’s being received as we intended it.

There is no better way to do that than to have an engagement and a dialogue. Your podcast is a great way to test that out in a simple and easy way at which you can shift it the next time you go and record. It’s a great place for you to test all of those brand ideas you have. Keep your podcast moving. Take some advice from Tonya and Michael and the Be BOLD Branding.

Go listen to some of their ideas out there because the concepts they’re talking about and the way they talk about branding is essential to the development of your podcast. Until next time.

Important Links

• Be BOLD Branding Podcast
• BrandFace
• Feed Your Brand
• Alex Sanfilippo – past episode
• BrandFace Business Page – Facebook
• Tonya Eberhart – Facebook
• Michael Carr – Facebook 
• BrandFace – YouTube
• BrandFace – Instagram
• Tonya Eberhart – Instagram
• Michael Carr – Instagram
• Tonya Eberhart – LinkedIn
• Michael Carr – LinkedIn
• BrandFace – Twitter
• BrandFace – Tiktok

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

Join the Binge Factor community today:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• YouTube