Ep. 90 – 4 Steps to Building a Personal Brand for Your Gentle Business

Stop Getting Personal Branding Backwards

There’s a lot of noise about personal branding. It often sounds complicated and heavy. But it doesn’t have to be.

As someone who helps women build gentle, aligned businesses, I’ve seen how many get branding backwards. They start with logos and colors instead of what really matters.

Doing Business Gently podcast - episode 90

Personal branding isn’t just about picking nice fonts and colors. It’s about sharing who you are and connecting with the people you can best help. It’s a holistic approach that uses words, images, audio, and video to tell your story.

Here’s my simple framework for building a personal brand that feels authentic and aligned with your gentle business:

The 4 Key Components of a Gentle Business Brand

  • Core Identity: This is about showing up as YOU, not a copy of someone else.
  • Audience Identity: This isn’t about detailed demographics. It’s about understanding where your people are stuck and where they want to go.
  • Connection Identity: How do you naturally communicate and show up in your business?
  • Visual Identity: This is where most people start, but it should actually come LAST.

Most entrepreneurs and designers get this backward. They start with visuals instead of building from the inside out.

When you build your brand in this order, it grows with you. As you evolve, your brand evolves too. It stays authentic to who you are while connecting with the people you’re meant to serve.

Remember

Your brand should feel like you. It shouldn’t be heavy or complicated. When done right, personal branding makes business easier and more joyful.

Listen to the episode to learn more about these 4 steps to build a personal brand for your gentle business.

Have you felt like your business
is off and not sure why?

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up as YOU in your business.
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Let’s Connect:

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Marta Goertzen: There’s a lot of talk out there about branding and personal branding. I think sometimes we get these grandiose ideas about what it means to build a brand or build a personal brand. It feels heavy and weighty. I want to dispel some of that for you.

I want you to approach personal branding as a way of building your business, of communicating with your clients, of communicating with potential clients and your audience in a very authentic way. I’ll explain a little bit more about this word “authentic” in a minute, but in an authentic and aligned way that doesn’t feel heavy.

[00:00:38] And we’re going to talk about one point that most entrepreneurs and a lot of graphic designers get wrong.

[00:00:46] Hey there! I’m your host Marta Goertzen, and welcome to Doing Business Gently, a podcast for women who are ready to think and do business from a place of purpose and intention. If this sounds like you and you wonder what it means to have a gentle and aligned business, you are in the right place.

[00:01:02] This is a place where we talk about life-business integration, and we approach this idea by creating a life-first business. One that is aligned to fit you, your values, priorities, personality, and the current season of life you’re in. We also talk about how to find business clarity so that you’re not constantly second-guessing every decision you make in your business.

[00:01:24] We talk about how our faith and business can work together, and importantly, how we can all do this from a place and a habit of rest. So join me today as we take a look at four key components of building a personal brand for a gentle business.

[00:01:41] Before we dive into the main content here, I would like to define what personal branding is. This is something I have mulled over for a long time, trying to understand my perspective on personal branding, because to me, it aligns very much with a gentle business.

[00:01:59] It aligns very much with finding clarity and the clarity journey. So to me, a personal brand is a holistic approach that you use to share about you, your business, how you do things, your ideas, and thoughts that you’ve had. You do that intentionally and consistently and draw in the people that you can best help. You do this through audio, video, graphics, and words.

[00:02:32] It’s a holistic approach. It’s not just finding your favorite logo and your favorite font and running with it. That is not the approach that we’re taking here. This is a very integrated, holistic approach to sharing about you and your business and connecting with the people that you want to serve.

[00:02:51] So there are four key components, I believe, in developing a personal brand for you and your business. I always start with your identity, your core identity, because this enables you to show up in your business and for your clients as you and not a copy of someone else.

[00:03:18] And this is where this word “authentic” comes in. As you are looking at your identity, we want you to show up as you, not a copy of someone else.

[00:03:34] Even though I have this love-hate relationship with the word “authentic” (as it’s a clichĂ© word that is used everywhere and seems to have lost its meaning), when you look at the definition, it absolutely has its place in a gentle business.

[00:03:47] When you consider how you’re going to show up in your business authentically and having an aligned identity that really does fit you and represent you, there are some things that you need to be asking. What drives you as an entrepreneur? Why did you start your business?

[00:04:05] This goes back to the Simon Sinek book, “Start with Why.” People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. People connect with you and want to work with you because of why you do it and knowing that you are a trusted source to help them solve a problem.

[00:04:21] When you are looking at your identity, you’re also identifying who you are. What are your strengths? Your talents? What’s your personality? How do you show up in your business?

[00:04:30] When you understand who you are in your business, you show up confidently and differently when you’re showing up as you and not as what somebody else has said you should be. So your core identity is one of those primary pillars of understanding your brand, your personal brand, and also understanding you as the entrepreneur and your business.

[00:04:55] Here’s a quick exercise: Write down three words that capture the essence of you in your business. If you could only use three words, what would those three words be that would describe you in your business?

[00:05:09] Now, this is something that we could go very much in depth with, and this is something that I do in my business coaching. This is one of the first things I take my clients through in helping them understand who they are, because so many times we get buried under the clutter and the noise.

[00:05:26] We get buried under all the freebies we’ve downloaded, the workshops that we’ve purchased, the YouTube videos we watch, the reels we’ve seen on social media. We get so lost in what others say has worked for them and who they say you need to be in your business in order to have a successful business.

[00:05:59] If this is something you would like to dive deeper into, and if you would really like to understand your business in a deeper way, spend some time on your core identity. As a believer, I also believe our identity is connected with who we are in our faith, who God says we are. That is a whole different conversation. If that’s something that you would like to hang out with me for a little bit and talk about, please reach out. There are links in the show notes below so that we can dive into this idea of who you are and who you are in your faith, who Christ says you are.

[00:06:22] Step two is understanding your audience, your audience identity. We do this because it helps you show up, know where to show up, and it gives you the information that you need to share about your business and connect with your audience.

[00:06:49] This is not about the super-detailed avatar per se. You don’t necessarily need to know where they went to school, what they buy at the grocery store, or if they have that proverbial 2-3 kids and a dog or cat type of identity. This is understanding where they are right now, where they’re stuck, and where they would like to go. How can you get them from stuck to moving forward and solving that problem?

[00:07:11] Sometimes it’s called understanding their pain points, but it really is understanding what they are struggling with. What is keeping them here and frustrating them? What is causing issues in their relationships, their finances, and their businesses? What is keeping them from showing up as themselves in their life and business?

[00:07:38] Think of it this way: if you were really wanting to know who your audience is, think about what wakes them up at 3 AM and leaves them wide awake and they can’t go back to sleep. Or what leaves them feeling super stuck at 3 in the afternoon and they start googling “how do I solve this?”

[00:08:02] Understanding the pain points is important—that journey where they’re feeling stuck—but it’s also very important to know what their aspirations are. What are they trying to get to? How are they going to feel when this problem is no longer keeping them stuck?

[00:08:22] Understanding the journey that they are on and how you can get them started on that journey or help them reach that destination gets you to the point where you’re connecting with your audience in a “you get me” way. They’re saying, “Oh, you are reading my mind.”

[00:08:47] For this step, a quick exercise is to ask yourself: What are the top things I know about my audience and who they are today when they are stuck in this problem? Then, also, what are the three things that I know they’re going to feel and what they’re going to experience when they are no longer struggling with that problem? What is that going to allow them to do?

[00:08:58] Now step 3 is, for lack of a better term, the connection identity—how do you naturally show up in your business in your marketing?

[00:09:13] This allows you to take this audience identity (because you understand your audience) and now it’s time to build into your brand the way you’re going to connect and communicate with them. We each have our own communication style.

[00:09:33] Again, this is another area, along with identity, where we get so caught up in what others say we should be doing. We get caught up in how they say we should be showing up in our marketing—that you need to be on all the platforms, or you need to just pick Instagram, or you need to pick just Pinterest, or you need to start a YouTube channel. This expert says that’s the only way you’re going to succeed in business and get out there in front of your audience.

[00:09:52] When you know who you are as an entrepreneur, you understand your identity, you understand your audience and what’s keeping them up, and where they are searching for those answers, you’re going to know: are they watching Instagram reels? Are they showing up on YouTube? Are they showing up on Pinterest?

[00:10:11] When you learn that and understand that, and then you can marry that with your natural way of showing up, you have a starting point. That way you’re not having to show up immediately on every single platform that’s out there. You can pick one or two that you know you can show up on and be consistent with.

[00:10:29] I would much rather you start where you can show up naturally and where you will actually stick to it and develop a level of consistency. As you learn and you start to evaluate—is this where my people are really showing up or is this not working for me?—then either you need to add on a new platform or maybe you need to switch your focus.

[00:10:49] But until you take the time to identify who you are, who your audience is, and what is your natural way of connecting with people, you’re going to feel stuck. You’re going to have fits and starts, and you’re never going to get to the place where you are out there sharing your brand, sharing your business, sharing how you can solve problems.

[00:11:09] So how you connect with your audience is a key component. That’s why this is number three, because it is part of the progression of getting to the point where you understand how you want to show up for your clients, how you want to show up and connect with the people that you can serve and get to know them.

[00:11:25] The more you get to know them, the more you’re going to understand about your audience. And then the more you know about your audience and understand them, the easier it is going to become to connect with them and use the words, use the visuals, use the tools and the platforms where they show up and get to know them even better. There is a cycle, and they do work off of each other.

[00:11:47] Here’s a quick exercise for step three: What are three words your person, your best-fit client, uses today to describe the problem they’re trying to solve? (It may be words, it may be phrases.) And then on the flip side, what are three words that your best-fit client uses to describe how they’re going to feel after solving that problem?

[00:12:08] Take a look at those and understand that journey that they’re on. Then ask yourself: where in my business, where in my marketing do I show up naturally—audio, video, is it written—to help them get from the point where they’re stuck to experiencing those positive feelings after the problem is solved?

[00:12:28] Take the time with this. This might take you a little bit of time to understand, but once you understand this and you understand how you can communicate, how you can help them get from problem to solution, that’s helping you build a business and a strong personal brand.

[00:12:44] Now step four is the part where I think a lot of people get this wrong.

[00:12:49] And I know this because I did this for many years in my web design business. I hear a lot of graphic designers do this. I have people coming to me with a website that was built backwards because they start with the visual identity first. But this is the last step, not the first.

[00:13:17] Your visual identity, your visual personal brand—the logos, your fonts, your colors, your brand photos, the photos you share on social media—these are tools that should reflect, not lead, your personal brand strategy. Your visuals play a supporting role and help tell a story.

[00:13:38] When I’m working with a web design client, we’re talking about their business, their branding, their marketing goals, and what content they need to include on their website. We’re looking at this from a client journey perspective, so we focus on the words. We want to make sure that we are talking to their best-fit client and that my client’s personality is showing up in the content. They’re taking their people on a journey to show them how they can help them solve the problem and get to the solution.

[00:13:57] Then we look at visuals. Then we look at what images are needed on this website. Because visuals support the content that’s on the website.

[00:14:07] When you are ready to show up consistently and intentionally for your audience, you need to have these 4 pieces of your personal brand figured out. So, as you are looking at this step 4, as you’re wrapping up this journey into understanding what your personal brand is, take a look: how does your current brand and your brand style, your personal brand, show up in your current business? Does it align with your current business?

[00:14:25] This is very important because if you are showing up in a certain way and you have a certain personality that is more calm and you like the blues and the greens, but you’re using primary colors, you are not in alignment. Your brand is not authentically representing you and your business.

[00:14:56] This is something that we need to do on a regular basis, because just as a business evolves, our brand is going to evolve. As you change, as you learn more about yourself, as you learn more about your clients, as you learn more about the problem your people face and how you help them solve it, your brand is going to evolve.

[00:15:17] But if you have a strong personal brand already, it will grow with you. It’s going to evolve with you. It’s going to go into the next iteration with you because you have built a strong presence that people respond to. As you refine, as you are growing, you’re taking that audience along with you.

[00:15:42] So a personal brand, I believe, is essential to a gentle business in order to keep it something that is simple and sustainable and allows you to grow as an entrepreneur. Your business grows, and your audience is not left behind.

[00:15:53] So just a quick recap here:

  • Step one: you need to understand you, your core identity.
  • Step two: you need to understand your audience identity—not their demographics, but another word to call it is their psychographics. What are they thinking about? What is keeping them stuck? And where do they want to get to?
  • Step three: your connection identity—how do you want to connect with them verbally? Visually? Do you want to show up on a video? Do you want to do a podcast? Do you want to focus more on written word?
  • Step four: you need to have a visual identity that supports your business and your brand—one that supports, not leads, your strategy.

[00:16:42] If you would like help getting started on this, if you go, “You know, my brand is not working for me, I need to build a strong personal brand,” I’d like to invite you to grab my business personality quiz.

[00:17:06] Years ago, 10-15 years ago, I took a personality quiz that showed me immediately that my business style and the actions I was taking to build my business were not in alignment. I was trying to do something that was totally foreign to my personality and my style. It really showed me that what I was doing was not helping me; it was hindering me.

[00:17:24] It was like an incredible weight had been lifted off my shoulders, and my business started to change. I showed up, and my business started to change. What I offered my clients started to change because I was showing up as me in my business and not what others said I needed to be.

[00:17:47] This quiz was created for my audience of gentle business builders who feel confused about why their business feels so hard at times. So if you would like a jump start in understanding your business personality style, you can find this quiz at https://SelahStudios.co/quiz.

[00:17:49] Thanks for joining me today. In the next episode, we’re going to take a look at the role of rest and self-care in a gentle business. I’m going to share with you about a few things I’ve been getting wrong about it, and so probably you have too.

[00:18:05] Together, let’s keep learning to create a simple and sustainable business where we can do business gently.

Related posts:

  1. Ep. 40 – 3 Questions That Won’t Help the Multi-passionate Entrepreneur Find Business Clarity
  2. Ep. 41 – Is Your Business Clarity Journey Stressing You Out?
  3. Ep. 43 – How to Overcome Toxic Hustle with a Selah Mindset
  4. Ep. 44 – Want a Simple and Sustainable Business? Define Your “Enough Points”

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