Finding Your Brand Archetype
In order to succeed as an entrepreneur, it's important to know yourself. You need to understand your wants, values, and according to Ann Bennett, your brand archetype.
Recently, our CEO sat down with Ann Bennett to share tips on how entrepreneurs can better improve. They discuss the importance of knowing yourself, being authentic, and standing out! In this blog, Hollywood Branded learns about the importance of finding your brand archetype from the expertise of Ann Bennett, the CEO and Founder of Renegade Marketing.
A Little More About The Guest
Ann is the founder and CEO of Ann Bennett Marketing, where she helps purpose-driven entrepreneurs build their standout brands and boost their profits. Ann is a bestselling author, coach, and brand profit builder, who has spoken across the country and around the world. Her personal slogan is "It's smart to fit in, but it's brilliant to stand out," and she will be sharing how this philosophy can help increase profits.
Interview Transcript Highlights
Question: Well, I'm very excited to dive in and discover all things of, what does renegade planning mean? But before we get there, can you share with our listeners how you got here today in your career, where this is what you're doing?
Answer: Wow. That's such an all-encompassing question, right? How did I get here? I'm one of these people, I don't plan stuff out, really. I just live my life...So, I went out to New York in the '80s to pursue an art career, a painting career. And everyone in New York who's creative ends up working a side gig while they're trying to sell their work and do all that. It was a great time...I'm originally from California. So, I call myself a 50/50 bar of East and West Coast conglomerate, if you will. And I always was one of these kids when I was a kid, I always thought you could do what ever you want. You could have whatever you want, be whoever you want, do whatever you want, as long as you enroll other people in this idea. And I think that's generally how I've lived my life. When I was in New York, I was top of the world. I was the "it girl" at Vogue. And I worked there when the woman wrote The Devil Wears Prada and all that kind of stuff.
And so I'm coming out of my gym in the morning. It's one of these super clear days...And I see these people standing on the corner and they're all gathered and they're looking up and usually I don't pay any attention because it's usually tourists and things like that. But for some reason I just turned and looked up to see the first plane crash into the World Trade Center...All of a sudden, it felt like my DNA had rearranged and I didn't really care about the glitz and the glamor of the fashion world and being involved in all that. And I wanted to do something with myself, so, I started studying Tony Robbins, Jerry and Esther Hicks, all this inner work and unleashing the giant within and all that kind of stuff, right?
I'm still studying today because I believe that you can only grow your business as big as you grow yourself in an internal self introspective kind of way. So, it was then that I turned directions and I was like, "Well, what are my talents, skills and abilities? I'm really creative. I'm uber tenacious and I like to look for gray areas and make things work," and all that kind of stuff. So, I decided to help entrepreneurs build their businesses. And yeah, the rest is history.
Question: So, renegade marketing. What is that? What do you mean by that?
Answer: Well, people are so funny because they're like, "Oh, I'm not a renegade," or, "I'm not a rebel," or la la la. I'm like, "You know what? If you are out of a traditional job and you are actually making your own way, building a business, you're a rebel. You're a renegade." And renegade marketing is really about understanding your personality style. I have four renegade archetype styles that I help people identify. And then we build their brand, their message, and how they're actually going to be, which is more of an amplification of who they already are, into their marketing. So, everything aligns and it just feels like it's a lot more fun and real because you can just go be yourself, essentially. So, the archetypes are the nurturer, the disruptor, the innovator and the geek. So, they all have different characteristics. A disruptor would speak and market and do things in a different way than, say, a nurturer would, and would show up on the stage differently and how their voices and their marketing would be completely different.
Question: So, what's the best way for this entrepreneur who is trying to figure out their archetype? How do they come up with what are their's and their company's values?
Answer: Yeah. I really think they overlap and a lot of times they can be the same. There isn't a real separation. Business in the past was very separate. "Oh, that's business and that's how we do business and that's how businesses run. This is my life and this is what I believe in and I'm a different person than the boss." It's not like that anymore. It's very immersed and very overlapped. So, to me, it's like a simple way... We all went into business to solve a problem for people. Mine is, how do you stand out in an overcrowded marketplace? You've got to use that 1% of your personality. Basically the easiest way to get there is to ask yourself what pisses you off and what breaks your heart. Because all of a sudden you can make a list of things, because there's an emotional attachment to those things.
So, we want to create a brand and market the way we are in the world as memorable. It's got to have a level of emotion attached to it because that's how the brain works, essentially. But I think, for people, just making a list of their values, even, simply their top values. Usually people can make a list of, I don't know, 10 or 20, and then pick out the top five.
Question: Do you find that people have a hard time selling in their values to the rest of the team, or if they have actually hired spot-on to their values, it's a lot easier?
Answer: Well, when you hire people that align with your values, you've got an awesome team. When you hire people that don't believe what you believe in and aren't inspired or it doesn't move them, they're not going to align behind that. They're just going to be there doing a job. And nobody really wants anybody to do a job anymore. I go and I do my job. I leave. Nobody even wants to live their life that way anymore. So, it's kind of great, right? Because we've all changed the way that we want to do business too, it's like, you want to align with companies you believe in. You want to align with people and companies that reflect your own values.
So, I think as we start to bring that all into focus, that's really what a brand does. It brings it all into a consistent congruence. A brand is actually an emotion that gets exuded by all these other things in the back, like what do I believe in? What do I care about? What am I wanting to do in the world? What matters? All these kinds of things, it's like the deeper level of what the brand is doing on the surface.
Question: Any last words to our audience of what they should be doing to take themselves to this next step? How can they challenge themselves better?
Answer: I think the biggest thing is to really write down those things that scare you. Does it scare you to actually be yourself? Does it scare you? I mean, people are always like, "No. No, it doesn't. I can be on stage. It's not a problem." I'm like, "Really? Well, then you got to play bigger." Because if you're not scared in a sense of excited and like, "Oh my God, I don't know how I'm going to do this," then you're not playing big enough. You got to go bigger. So, if you're that kind of person, then I challenge you to just do something that, to you, it would be a miracle if it happened. Do that. If you're somebody who's like, "I don't know what to say when I go networking. I'm an introvert," then great. Introverts are the best networkers because they ask questions...So, I just want to say to everybody, be who you really are. Because each one of those archetypes, the nurturer, the disruptor, the innovator, and the geek, all have benefits and attributes that people are looking for to be reflected, and all of them are great.
Check Out The Podcast!
Ann has SO MUCH great information from her experience in marketing and as an entrepreneur. Check out the podcast below to learn more about how to find your brand archetype!
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