How to be authentic in business without oversharing.

Did you know that in Eastern languages the word for heart is the same word as for mind?

The West has been built off of left brain thinking: numbers and data and analyzing. Chances are, if I say building a smart brand, you're going to think of clinical intelligence. But what about when I say, building a heartfelt brand? A little softer, a little less defined, maybe even a little less realistic.

But building a heartfelt brand and mindful brand are one in the same. It's not pick or choose. Especially when you're small, building things the heartfelt way is the smart way. It's going to help you enjoy your work. Do it longer and with more satisfaction. It's going to attract people to you. It's going to make marketing and selling easier. Wildly so.

And how do you build a heartfelt brand? With authenticity.

How often do you come across advice telling you to be authentic? Without any actual tactical help for doing so?

How to grow a YouTube channel? Be authentic. How to grow an email subscriber list? Be authentic. How to improve your social media presence? You guessed it, be authentic.

This term used to actually give me anxiety. As if I somehow wasn't cool enough to be authentic. There is pressure to choose the traits that are most likely to be popular. This is why we already covered shifting your thinking away from rules and trends about how you are supposed to look. So in case it doesn't go without saying, don't try to cultivate something you're not. It won't work.

Let's start with your brand promise.

In a capitalist society, transactions take the form of currency for a product or service. But what's really happening is a currency of promises. You are promising to give something and your audience is promising to give something in return, whether monetary or attention. It's a humans doing business with humans.

Your promise is about taking a stand. It's about setting a goal and living up to it. And without ever even saying it, your audience will come to associate you with it.

Once you have your brand promise, next up is your brand descriptors. This is where you personality and ambitions start to come to life. Start to take shape. The idea here is to come up with a couple words that describe your brand. How it looks and feels, the overall aesthetic you want to convey.

And we live in a positive world here, so the trick is to have the opposite not be negative. You wouldn't want to pick a descriptor like honest because the opposite is dishonest. Instead you're looking for something like playful, because the opposite is serious. It's perfectly okay to be serious, that just might not be you.

And it should also be above and beyond the bare minimum of what it means to be in business.

C'mon people, I assume if I hire you to mow my lawn you're going to do a good job. I'm always a little wary when a business takes the basis of the work they do and makes it sound like a feature: delivers on time, accurate, responds to messages.

And this last piece is where it gets really fun.

What are you personal interests? Think back to the quote from the beginning of this video: to be what no others are. Take a few minutes to step back and see yourself, your work, this brand you're creating with fresh eyes. Where are some places you can fold in extra pieces of your personality?

You can use these little extras you bring to the table to add personality to your website or emails. You make it a fun giveaways or fundraiser or event.

Maybe you're a non-profit trying to protect wild spaces, but you also love houseplants. Make sure there are plants in your office, have them in the back of zoom calls. Giveaway plants or sell them as a fundraiser. Something like because life is meant to be lived with nature.

Don't worry about getting things exactly right.

Give yourself room to play and evolve. And start by giving yourself some time to really dig into the worksheet and explore your own authentic voice.