11 - amazon web services · makeup artists in the world. and she just came out with this line, i...

V I D E O T R A N S C R I P T

n o v e m b e r c l a s s

sc

s s

oc

ie

ty

wo

rk

sh

ee

t 11

Create Your Personal Brand

Video Transcript - November 2019scs society

© French Kiss Life Inc. 2019PAGE 2 OF 7

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9

Create Your Personal Brand

Hello, my friends. I am so excited about this month’s topic and I know I say that every single month, but this month’s topic is something that I know I’m so good at teaching because I have done it, I have created it and I know where we get tripped up. And I know some of you are already thinking, “But Tonya, I’m not a personal brand.” And that’s what this month is all about, creating your brand and creating it on purpose because I don’t care if you’re a stay at home mom or you work in corporate, you are a brand. When people think of you, they associate you with something. So the question really becomes, are you creating your brand on purpose or is it being created by everybody else without your say so? Because I want you to take back ownership of the story that you tell in your life because it impacts everything. It makes life so much easier.

But before we dive into the topic, I have to share something with you because you know when I’m passionate about something, I have to tell all the people, and this is what I have to share with you. Look at this darling. This is my new favorite lipstick. And not only is the packaging absolutely adorable, check out these little lips, but this lipstick, when you put it on your lips, it literally is the most luxurious lipstick I’ve ever, ever worn. And it’s by Pat McGrath, who I was told, she’s been in the industry for a long time and she’s probably one of the most famous makeup artists in the world. And she just came out with this line, I think like two years ago, and I’m in love. I’m in love.

And so the name of this one is her Matte Luxe Lipstick, and this color is called Venus in Furs. What an incredible name, Venus in Furs. And so if you are interested in this, I’ll just make it easy, you can go to frenchkisslife.com/venus and it’ll take you directly to this one. But she has so many beautiful colors to choose from. But again, I’m obsessed. And that’s a great segue into creating your personal brand. Do you see what I just did? I made it so that you associate me with lipstick, which is something that I love, right? Obviously I named my company French Kiss Life, but that was very deliberate. That’s what creating a personal brand is all about. You deciding what you want to be associated with, how you want to be known, what you want people to say about you, how you want to think of yourself. And it’s something that I have been building for the last decade. So I’m going to speak about it from my personal experience and my perspective on what a brand is, how to create one, and why it is so important.

So let’s start by talking about why creating your personal brand is important. The first thing that I’ve noticed is that your personal brand helps you to be more successful in your career. Now, you may be working in corporate, as I was mentioning earlier, but when you know who



you are and what your strengths are, you can begin to find companies and job placements that feel really, really good to you, that fit within your personal brand. And people will know what you bring to the table because you’re so clear on who you are and what your strengths are. If you’re an entrepreneur, it definitely helps, you get to stand out in the marketplace.

When I first started my company, I was very generic. I was looking around what everybody else was doing and my first class was actually called Health Happiness and Baggy Jeans, I think I had like eight women who signed up for it. And it just didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel in alignment, I was bored out of my mind. And when I decided to really create my brand based on what I love, based on who I wanted to be, that is when my business took off. When women started to associate me with style, and personal development, and Paris, I started to be known for something and that’s so important. What do you want to be known for? I was yesterday going through, sorry, I got something in my eye. I was going through my iTunes reviews because I was choosing some for the community spotlight on the podcast, and I was reading through the reviews and what I realized was happening is that women were reflecting back to me how I have wanted to show up. The intentional choices that I’ve made.

For example, one woman said, “You’re like champagne and caviar,” or no, “Cornbread and champagne,” although I do like champagne and caviar as well. But she was like, “You’re like cornbread and champagne,” and that has been on purpose. I wanted my brand to feel welcoming, right? I’m a Southern girl. Is that Southern hospitality, I wanted women to feel like, “Wow, I can go and sit in her living room and have a conversation with her and she’ll understand me. She will be kind. She is like my best friend.” On the other hand, I wanted it to feel luxurious. I want it to feel beautiful. I wanted it to feel aspirational as well as relatable. And so when I read that I’m like, wow, I am really doing a good job with my branding because women are saying what I hope that they would say. I hear all of the time, “Tonya, you’re like my best friend. We’ve never met but you’re in the car with me on the way to work. I listen to your podcast.” That has been very deliberate.

So how do you want to be known? And when you shape your brand around that, you’re going to start to see that reflected back to you from what people are saying to you. The other thing that I noticed with having a brand is that it makes your life easier. When you know who you are, when you know what you value, when you know what’s important to you, when you know how you want to show up, you know what decisions to make. You know what to wear, you know where to travel, you know what to post on social media, right? It’s just that filter in which you run everything through so that you are consistent with the woman you want to be, which is what your personal brand is, right? It’s aligning your daily thoughts and feelings and actions with the woman that you want to be.

And then finally, the other thing that I’ve noticed about creating a personal brand is that it takes you out of fixing yourself into creating yourself. Very different energy. Like you are amazing right now as you are, and who do you want to become? What do you want to represent in the



world? And so that’s why I love personal branding so much, it’s because it puts you in this beautiful state of creativity to create yourself as a woman. Now, one of the things that I have heard from women when it comes to this topic is this feeling of conflict between who they want to be and who they currently are. So on one hand there’s people saying, “Create your fantasy version and live her out,” and then there’s this other school of thought of like, “Be your authentic self. Be who you are.”

And what I can say is that I believe that they both blend beautifully, and let me tell you why. A lot of times who we’re being right now, we would never choose on purpose. If we could go back and choose who we wanted to be and literally create ourselves, would we choose the version that we are right now or is there another version that we would prefer to be? And what I have come to discover for myself is that my brand is my authentic self. It’s who I came here to be, but I had so many layers of shoulds and what I thought I was supposed to be that I had sort of buried her. And so the Tonya Lee that you all see is my authentic self, it’s who I came to this world and this earth to be, and it is like the fantasy version of myself as well as the authentic version, right? I’m always evolving into her.

And truthfully, my name is not Tonya Lee. Well, it is my name, Tonya Lee, Lee is my middle name. My real name is Rising, Tonya Rising. But when I decided to create a personal brand, I realize I can make it all up, right? I could literally choose who I wanted to be and I do love my maiden name. I think Rising is an amazing name, but I wanted to be risen already, if that makes sense. I wanted to leave that version of me behind and really embrace the woman I wanted to be and the woman who I felt like I was. And so Tonya Lee it was, it felt so good. It felt so right. It was still me honoring who I was, because it is my name, but it was also deciding what parts I was going to leave behind and what parts I wanted to embrace.

I still wanted to keep the southernness in me. The part of me that my grandmother taught me to be full of grit and grace and gumption, right? But I also had this other version of me that I wanted to evolve into. The part of me that traveled, the part of me who was stylish, the part of me that was confident and bold and also very feminine. And so I want you to realize when it comes to your personal brand, you literally get to make it up. You get to decide. It may be something completely different from where you are now, but you will know it’s your truth because it will taste like freedom. It will feel exciting, it will feel passionate, it will feel joyful, and it will also feel scary because you literally have to let parts of yourself die in order to become your personal brand.

So now let’s dive in and go through the exercises together. The first thing that I ask you is to get clear on your current brand. And a great way to think about this is to imagine that you walk into a party tonight and there’s a group of people in the room and they’re talking about you. What are they saying? And what three adjectives do they use to describe you? And do you like it? You may like parts of it, but there are other parts that you’re thinking, “That’s not how I want to be known. That’s not how I want people to think about me.” And the most important thing is how



you think of you, right? All of this is going through your filters. So most likely this isn’t what other people are saying, it’s what you’re thinking of you.

And then the next exercise is to think about your future brand, how you want to be known? Who you want to be as a woman? And I personally think that this is your authentic self because it’s being born out of desire. And you wouldn’t have a desire if you weren’t capable of creating it, if it was not meant for you to experience. And so if you have any conflict at all between your authentic self and your personal brand, I want you to understand that who you decide to be is your authentic self. Because who you’re being now is most likely a result of limiting beliefs, it’s a result of who you’ve been told you should be and you get to decide and you will know it’s your truth because it will taste like freedom. And so when you’re going through this exercise, ask yourself, does it feel good? Does it feel good to think about people talking about me in a certain way?

And that’s what I want you to think about. For this exercise imagine the same scenario, you’re at a party, there’s a group of people talking about you. What do you want them to be saying? And what three adjectives do you want them to describe you with? And even given you a list of adjectives, and I love having words because words have meaning, they have context, right? We know the difference between freely and plain. We know the difference between edgy and romantic. And so I’d given you these words and I want you to choose no more than five that really describe who you want to be as a woman. Three’s even better, because remember, focus gives you more clarity and more direction. But I know some of you all are going to want to pick a couple extra, so feel free. Maybe that’s part of your brand. You like doing all the things.

But for example, let’s say you pick natural and modern and fierce. I can already imagine that woman in my head. How she shows up, how she’s dressed, how she carries herself versus a woman who is urban and edgy and cool. My mind already constructs an image of who she may be. In fact, think about certain famous people that we know and then notice what words come to mind when you think of them. So when you think of Oprah, what adjectives come to mind? Inspiring is one for me. I always also see Oprah as modern. I feel like she’s a modern day scholar, so to speak. What about Lady Gaga? What words come to mind? Or Madonna or princess Diana, right? They have an essence about them. And that’s what we want to drill down into. What is the essence in which you want to be known and the essence in which you want to embody.

The next exercise is to define your core values, what you stand for, what you represent, what you want to build your life around. I just had our annual company meeting a few months ago and we got very clear on our core values because we realized that we are going to run everything through that. Who we hire, what we produce, how we treat our customers. Everything will be filtered through what we stand for. And I think it’s important as women that we know our core values as well. So what are your core values? Maybe your core value is wealth, maybe your core value is health. Maybe it’s a combination of a few core values, but the more clarity you have around what you value, again, the easier it is to create your personal



brand. And then we’re going to take all of that and distill it down into a personal brand mission statement because every great company has a mission statement. This is what guides the company just like it will guide your life.

So what is one statement that you can take all of the things that you’ve just written down and you’ve discovered about yourself that you would be excited to wake up every morning and live by? And I’ve given you some examples of a few. So to inspire positive change through coaching, to live a creative life through my artwork, to encourage women to see their beauty, to be a mother who supports my children to become who they were meant to become, to positively impact the lives of every person I meet. These are actually personal mission statements from some clients. And so when you’re thinking about your personal mission statement, I want you to think about how do you want to be known? What do you want your family to say about you when you’re gone? Yes, it’s a little bit morbid, but that way you can reverse engineer all of it, right?

Let’s pretend your life is over. What do you want your legacy to be? What do you want people to be saying about you? What are your top three values? How do you want people to feel when they interact with you? What do you deeply believe? What kind of world do you want to live in? And then take what you’ve written down from those statements and create your personal mission statement. And then the last exercise is your brand brief. So I had the great honor of creating a brand brief when we did our rebrand at French Kiss Life. And it was so much fun to see the visual representation of my brand, of what I have decided I want to represent in the world and what I want French Kiss Life to represent in the world. And this is like your creative brief that will bring your brand to life.

And so some things to think about are what colors best represent your personal brand? The colors for French Kiss Life, and they’re are also colors I love, are navy, nude, blush and then we have some accent colors. But I love those because they are modern, they’re romantic, they’re elegant, they’re timeless, which are part of my brand words. It’s the tone that I want the brand, The French Kiss Life, to have. And so think about your brand colors and if your personal brand had a store front, what would it look like? So fun, right? Think about the stores you love walking into. What is it about them? What is the aesthetic of it? And then what you’re going to find is that there is a tone to it, right? It may be fun. Fun you think of Kate Spade, it’s colorful. Versus if you walk into an AllSaints, it’s very urban and sort of dark and goth. So what would your store front look like?

And then describe an outfit that best represents your personal brand. This is super powerful because it can begin to instruct what you incorporate into your wardrobe. Then imagine someone writes an article about your personal brand, what words did they use? What statements do they use to describe your personal brand? And then what words do they avoid? This is really, really good. So when I did my brand brief for French Kiss Life, I had words that were allowed and words that were not allowed. And so when anyone comes into the company,



we can hand them this document and say, “Here’s the feel of French Kiss Life.” And imagine a copywriter comes on to work with me. They’re going to see the tone of the brand voice. They’re going to see what words we use and what we don’t use, right?

You probably noticed I don’t curse a lot. Occasionally one might slip out, but it’s not part of my brand versus there are brands out there who every other word is a curse word. That is their brand. It’s all good, it’s all okay, but I will attract a different woman into my life because I don’t believe I need to curse every other word in order to get my message across. My grandmother always said, “If you have to curse, you have a limited vocabulary.” And then sometimes I curse. So again, it’s just what I’ve chosen for myself.

Let’s see what else. Next thing, this is a fun one, write a social media post that embodies your brand. As I was saying before, when you get clear on your personal brand and you go to react to something that’s happening in the world and write just this firey post, you may realize, “Whoa, that’s the old brand. That is not who I want to be. The new me, number one, may not write a post right now, or she would write it in a different tone, in different voice.” So play around even with what you’re posting on social media and make sure it’s aligning with the personal brand that you’re creating for yourself.

And then finally, what images best capture your personal brand. When you’re flipping through magazines, notice which images really speak to your soul, that really embody the woman you want to be. And so yeah, have fun creating your personal brand because in the challenge we’re going to talk about how to live it out in your everyday life.

11 - amazon web services · makeup artists in the world. and she just came out with this line, i...

Documents