When it comes to branding the first thing many people think about is colors, fonts, and logos. And while those things are important to creating your visual brand, a lot more goes into it than selecting your color palette.

Lisa Furze is a brand consultant & designer. She helps her clients match the quality of their products and services to their brand, so you create branding you can't wait to share.

During this conversation, a few topics we discuss are:

• The 3 core pillars of brand identity
• The role your values play in brand design
• Why you may not be ready for a visual identity
• How brand identity plays into your overall positioning
• How and why you should inject personality into your brand

And so much more.

So, if you've been thinking about updating your brand's visual identity, you'll want to listen to this episode as we walk through Lisa's process and answer all of the top questions you might have about branding.

Meet Lisa

Website: LisaFurze.com

For many solopreneurs, email marketing is scary. It makes you vulnerable. You think things like -  What if I send a bad email? What if people unsubscribe? If this sounds like you then you'll love today's guest.

Mason Mitcham is an email marketing strategist. He develops custom email marketing strategies for coaches, B2B consultants, and agencies who want to close more clients without any additional ad spend. But more than that, Mason is an email advocate because he knows not only is email not dead, but it's the key to growing your business.

During this conversation, a few topics we discuss are:

• "Salesy" emails
• Why you need to send emails
• A cadence for getting started with email marketing
• A formula you can use to write emails that your list will open
• How unsubscribes can actually make you money...Juicy stuff this one

And so much more.

So, whether you're afraid to send emails because you don't know what to say or you want to begin sending emails but don't know how to get started, Mason will put your mind at ease.

Meet Mason

LinkedIn: Mason Mitcham

Website: Mason-Mitcham.com

Do you find digital marketing confusing?  Considering all its crazy acronyms like - CMS, CTR, CPC, CPM, PPC, SERP, SEM, and SEO - it's easy to get overwhelmed quickly. Fortunately, today's guest is an expert at what all of those crazy letters mean and how to best use them to build awareness for your brand.

Mateo Moore is the owner of Extension.Team. A non-traditional marketing agency specializing in driving leads for their clients using Paid and Organic traffic. When he's not helping clients master their digital marketing acronyms, Mateo serves as a fractional CMO as well. 

In a wide-ranging and sometimes technical conversation we cover things like:

• Organic vs paid traffic
• Why keywords are going away
• Linking your audience and message
• Where you should be online
• The importance of reducing friction
• Why you need a relationship funnel - not a sales funnel

 Meet Mateo

LinkedIn: Mateo Moore

Website:  Extension.Team

Go talk to your customers. It's common advice given to entrepreneurs when it comes to basically anything. 

• Need help with your copy? Go talk to customers.
• Want to know if your new product idea will work? Go talk to customers.

But what if talking to your customers is bad advice? Today's guest helps us take a look at the right and wrong way to talk to your customers so you get the information you need from those conversations to drive business decisions and results.

Ryan Paul Gibson (RPG) helps marketers run customer research interviews that don't suck. He's conducted over 1800 interviews and runs a company called Content Lift, where he helps marketing and sales teams conduct proper customer research. 

During this conversation, we talk about the following topics.

• Types of research to conduct
• How goals play into customer conversations
• The ideal number of clients to talk to - it's not as many as you think
• Questions to ask clients during the interog...Whoops! I mean Interview
• Questions to ask in an application 

Meet RPG

LinkedIn: Ryan Paul Gibson

Website: Content Lift

Have you ever been told you should be a speaker?  Or maybe you've thought about "becoming a speaker" but you're not sure how to get started? If so then you're in luck because today's guest specializes in helping folks, maybe just like you, build and develop your speaker brand.

Erin Thomas is co-founder of The S.T.A.R. Experience (you'll have to listen to understand the acronym but it's worth it). The S.T.A.R. Experience is a program that helps speakers gain brand clarity, confidence, and visibility - in just 30 days.

During this conversation, we talk about the following topics.

• Growing your Personal Brand
• The importance of aligned Messaging (we embrace this one!)
• Tools to build a speaker brand
• Is speaking only for extroverts?
• How to create a speaker reel (you probably haven't heard of half this advice)
• How to write a speaker pitch

Meet Erin

LinkedIn: Erin Thomas

Website: The Star Experience

If you have an inkling that you should be doing video, but you're not sure what to talk about, or you're concerned about how you look on camera, this episode is for you. 

Today's guest is Kamara Toffolo. Kamara is a LinkedIn Top Voice and was named in 2019 by JobScan as the #1 Job Search Expert to follow on LinkedIn, but her recognition and success in the market is due in part to her talent and success with video content.

From high-quality YouTube content to interviews and Q&A sessions on LinkedIn Live, Kamara has effectively built and strengthened her brand as a one-woman video production house, even though she wasn't comfortable being on camera when she started. 

During this conversation, we talk about the following topics.

1. How to get comfortable on camera - can you say Googly Eyes?

2. The easiest way to find relevant content.

3. The equipment you need (it's not what you think)

4. Why you should be doing video...even if it scares you.

Meet Kamara

LinkedIn: Kamara Toffolo

Youtube: Kamara Toffolo Careers

Values, Goals, and Systems...Oh My. Today's guest is Yvonne Heimann. Yvi, as she is known on her popular YouTube channel Ask Yvi, is a verified ClickUp consultant, business efficiency, and scalability consultant. She helps entrepreneurs Boss their Business, so they can stop the crazy hustle and step into their CEO role with the right processes, systems, values, and goals in place. 

With all of her focus on business efficiency and productivity, you'd think our discussion would focus on systems, but we spent much of the conversation talking about how your values and goals should drive your systems and business. During our conversation, we spoke about the following topics.

1. How do values impact our daily activities.

2. Why you need business and personal goals.

3. What to do when your goals conflict.

4. How you can use systems to activate your values and goals.

Meet Yvi

Web: AskYvi

LinkedIn: Yvonne Heimann

Youtube: AskYvi

Ever wondered what it takes to be an influencer? Erica and I did too, so we invited Johanna Voss on the podcast for a chat about influencer marketing. Johanna is a Talent Manager for women who are Multicultural Influencers and has supported over 500 successful brand/influencer partnerships to date.

During our conversation, we talk about the following topics.

1. What is an influencer? (probably not what you think)

2. What does a talent manager do?

3. The strategies and tactics of successful influencers (and how you can use them in your business)

4. The one thing you need to focus on to run a healthy business.  

If you've ever wanted to see inside an influencer's mind, this episode is for you. 

Meet Johanna

Web: JohannaVoss.com

LinkedIn: Johanna Voss

Instagram: johannavoss

Music purchased via Soudstripe.com

Track Title: Business Or Pleasure?

Artist Name(s): Avocado Junkie

Writer Name: Sander Kalmeijer

Soundstripe Inc. grants Ryan Rhoten a nonexclusive,

limited, non-sublicensable, and nontransferable license to download, reproduce,

prepare derivative works, distribute, perform and display the song Business Or Pleasure?

solely as combined with your work of authorship, titled S1 E5 Influencer Marketing with Johanna Voss.