My Business Brand Values (Another Look BTS!) | 103
In episode 98, I shared all about the upcoming shifts and pivots my business is taking this new year. Honestly, I’m a big fan of pivoting. It means embracing new parts of my business and bringing new passions into my life. But, it also comes with plenty of headaches and stressful evenings. Before I decided to pivot, I wanted to make sure the foundation of my business, like my brand values, was clear and solid.
To be honest, there have been [many] moments in this pivot when I wondered if I was self-sabotaging. My business is going well… is this shift going to change that? Am I insane for changing things up? However, as I began to identify my brand values, I realized this new pivot aligned perfectly with what I want my brand to be and represent.
What are Brand Values?
Most likely you have personal values you stand behind. You might highly value honesty, respect, and family. These are the guiding principles in your life. They represent how you aim to treat others, prioritize your life, and what you are willing to accept from others.
The same goes for brand values. These guide your business. They represent how your business feels, looks, presents itself, treats others, and the kind of work you will take on.
You can come up with your brand values in a variety of ways. I took a pretty simple route of Googling “brand value list” and writing down a ton of words that I liked. Then, I started narrowing the words down and combining some that had similar meanings. The last three standing were my brand values!
What are my Brand Values?
As I mentioned, my business is going through a shift. As I move towards holistic marketing, I want to encompass three particular values. I want to share them with you because as a business owner (and maybe even a potential client), they can help you create your own and determine the type of people you want to work with!
#1 Authentic - To me, authentic means being true to yourself and your personality, and standing in your own light. I’ll be honest, I struggle with getting personal and vulnerable in my business. But, I always come to the table as myself.
Authenticity also describes how I do business. I help clients market themselves in authentic ways, not cookie-cutter strategies we could all find in a quick Google search.
#2 Sustainable - This one is really important to me because having a sustainable business means having a long-term business without burnout.
This is why I love working with solopreneurs or small businesses. I want to guide them towards a marketing strategy that is sustainable long term and works with the season they are currently in.
#3 Balance - For me, balance is about giving time and space to my priorities when necessary. Sometimes, it’s a gut feeling. Sometimes, it’s more obvious. It all starts with an awareness of priorities – family, my children, my husband, my business, my own mental health, etc. And then recognizing what the priority is in that exact moment. It’s important to know that while my family may be my number one priority, that there are moments when my business HAS to come first.
But, over time our priorities should be getting the right time allotment… So I’ll often do a gut check, “Do I feel like I’ve given enough time to my children, husband, family, myself, and my business in the past week or past month?” If my time is not in alignment with my priorities (for that longer period of time) then I start to decide how will I shift my time or priorities to get back in balance.
When I wrote these brand values, I realized they represented holistic marketing in a nutshell! They are everything I hope to achieve with holistic marketing in my business and bring to others through our work together. #yay!
If you want to create a holistic marketing plan and create a balanced, sustainable, and authentic business, let’s work together!
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Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Growth, a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs, looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Okay, so before we hop into the episode, I just wanna remind you to download my free guide to Facebook Targeting Audiences. It has been created specifically for teacher business owners, and I go through the warm, lookalike, and cold interest-based audiences that you need to have set up to be [00:01:00] running Facebook and Instagram ads.
There are checklists and brainstorming pages so that you know, you have everything. But as an exciting special, I'm opening up some audience audit calls where you can hop onto a 15-minute zoom call with me, and you'll get my eyes on your audiences so that you can make sure not only you have all of the audiences, but they truly are perfect for your business. So head to marketscalegrow.com/audienceaudit to book your free audience audit Call today.
Okay, now into the episode.
Hello. Welcome back to Market Scale Grow. I'm your host Jenzaia and this is our final Saturday strategy session of 2022. Now for full [00:02:00] transparency's sake, I'm actually recording this episode on November 17th, so a full month before it goes live, but I wanted to give you another behind-the-scenes look at the shifts that are happening to the business as they're happening. Like I said in this first episode when we talked about it, episode 98, I just want anyone who is also going through a pivot to know they're not alone and kind of to see what it feels like and how other business owners are handling it and the different decisions and choices and struggles that are happening and how someone else is dealing with it so that you don't feel so alone and that you don't feel like you are a complete lunatic for what you're feeling because it can be really hard and really stressful. And I think that that's probably where I [00:03:00] should start.
I love Facebook ads, but I'm also being pulled towards holistic marketing strategy, and so I feel crazy like I feel like I'm a crazy person who's trying to self-sabotage my success. Even though I'm not stopping the Facebook ads, I'm not burning down my business. I'm just adding a new piece. I still feel like I'm a little bit crazy about this change, this shift that I'm going through.
And I feel like the hardest part is not really knowing where it's going yet and feeling like I have to trust myself, especially when I also feel like the universe is giving me all of these signs that I'm making the wrong choice and that I'm crazy. One of the things that's happening is, I talked about this in a previous episode, but I had a [00:04:00] ton, like a huge influx of requests for Facebook ad services, which is really nice.
But when you're, you've just launched your new offer in a totally different direction, it just felt like almost a slap in the face. And so that was really, really hard and I had to pause and say, what do I really want? And I really wanna do both. And so, I have made some shifts in both pieces of the business so that I can continue serving clients, additional clients with my Facebook ad services, but that I can also continue to pursue this new avenue and to continue to move forward with helping support teacher business owners with their marketing strategy.
And to create that coaching package that I'm really, really excited about. And so, because this was a huge transition, I really wanted to [00:05:00] make sure my business foundations were in the right place and that I had a solid foundation before I moved back like moved forward. So we actually did the look back, look forward analysis on my own business.
I went through my vision. I went through my mission. I looked at my brand values and my brand stories and my branding in general so that I could continue to move forward knowing that my brand was on solid footing. And so I'm really excited about it. And today I kind of wanna just let you know where I landed with business values because we ha, we've talked about vision and mission and goals a lot recently, but we haven't talked about business values.
And so I came up with these by answering a few different questions about what's important to me was important to my clients, how I want my business to run and [00:06:00] feel, and how I want my brand to feel. I looked through a ton of word lists of core business values, and once I had done all of these different things, I compiled each individual list into one big list and found the values that just kept coming up again and again and again.
And so it came down to these three authentic, sustainable, and balanced. Let's chat through each one about why they're important to me, what they mean, and how I see them, not just for myself, but with my clients. So the first one is authentic, and to me, that means being true to yourself, to your personality, your voice, and being able to stand in your own light, which is fascinating to me because I really struggle with sharing my personal life and my personal stories, and [00:07:00] I really, really like separating my personal life from my business. And it's been a struggle for me to feel like I'm sharing authentically when I am being so private, right?
But authentic came up again and again and again, and I think it's because there's this huge shift in marketing right now towards authentic relationships and authentic marketing and authentic connections, and really just being yourself and being true to yourself being genuine. And so I think that it, it comes from that and wanting to support my clients to be authentically themselves, to market in ways that feel authentic and feel genuine to them and to just be real humans.
And to be real, real people who have tons of emotions and tons of life stories and tons of amazing things happening in their [00:08:00] business, and just this melding pot of it all. So that's kind of where authentic came from. The second one is sustainable, and this is to be able to continue long-term without burnout.
And I think that sustainability is really, really important to me. Especially when we are solo business owners and solopreneurs, there's this, this idea that we're not doing enough because we see these gigantic, multi seven eight-figure businesses who are doing all the things because they have teams that are helping them.
And so I really wanna support teacher business owners, especially solopreneurs or people who are just starting to work with their very first few contractors or employees. They don't have gigantic teams. I want them to be able to market in sustainable ways that they can continue over the long term. And I'm sure you heard episode 101, which was all about how I believe consistency creates success.
And to [00:09:00] create consistency in your business, you need a sustainable marketing plan. And I really struggled with this at first when I first started marketing my business, back when I still was focusing on TPT and I couldn't figure it out, and there's definitely still some of this today, especially with my social media strategy, where I would do really, really great for a week or two, and then I just vanish and I would be pulling posts together and then I'd refocus and do really well for a couple more weeks and then vanish.
And just this cycle continues because I didn't have. I didn't have any sort of sustainable plan. And so I am very passionate about helping teachers not burn out and helping them market in ways that both feel authentic but are also sustainable to them. And then value number three is balance. And balance to me does not mean that [00:10:00] everything. Equal. And the easiest way that I've ever been able to explain this is to think about your closest friends, the ones that you go out with all the time, and sometimes somebody will pick up the check. The next time you're out, you might feel like it's your turn to pay. I got this one. It's my turn to pay. And then, then the following time, friend number three says, Hey, I got this. Don't worry about it, it's on me.
Now, everybody has paid their equal share, but nobody actually tallied. Bill number one was $87.32, Bill number two was $62, and bill number three was $92. And so the third person who paid actually paid more and the second person paid the least.
We don't typically track like that, but we all feel balanced. And so if the second [00:11:00] person, who only paid $60. They might feel like, okay, I need to pay again sooner because my bill was the least, maybe. But what the goal is, and what typically happens in groups that go out together and you pay, I pay whoever pays.
Is that over time, as long as everyone feels like they've paid their fair share. Nobody's keeping that exact tab, but everyone feels like it's balanced. And when things go out of balance is when you have someone saying, Hey, it's my turn to pay. I'll pay this time. Hopefully, if you have the right friends.
And I say that because when I was in Taiwan, there was a girl who lived in Taiwan and she and I had the plan to go on a trip during Chinese New Year. And then a friend of mine from back home actually came and joined us for the trip. And when we were on the trip, my Taiwanese friend and I would pay for [00:12:00] taxis or the sunscreen or dinner, we would just pay and be my turn or her turn. And then my friend from back home, when it was her turn to pay, she would ask us to split the bill. So we had a taxi ride that was $10 and all of a sudden we're all having to pull out $3. But my Taiwanese friend and I split and we just, it was a $10 taxi.
I paid my $10 the next time she paid her $10. And what ended up happening was this feeling of animosity started to build. We started to resent my friend from back home because she was splitting the bill so equally every single time. But the Taiwanese friend and I were picking up the full share and what we actually learned later on in the trip, was that my friend from back home had kept a list of the times that she had paid in full on her phone.
She, she kept a list and then actually split it and asked us to pay this chunk even [00:13:00] like later, which was, it was just challenging because things didn't feel balanced. And so that's kind of two examples of basically the same thing of splitting the check and paying for one another but that's the kind of balance that, I mean, I do not mean everything is equal.
So if we look at this with our business and our personal lives, what do we need to consider? So for me, I have my business, I have my school. I do work in the school one day a week I have my kids and I have my husband, and then we have family as well. So that's my kids and my husband together, and I do split it up into like three different categories.
The family unit, my kids and my husband, because I think it's really valuable that we're spending time together as a family. But I also spend time with just my kids, and I do spend time with just my husband, right? So those are three different pieces of the puzzle. And then my business, school, and personal time for me, [00:14:00] right?
And so, balance doesn't mean that in 24 hours each of these things is getting the exact same amount of time. That would be impossible, right? Instead, what it means is that there are times when my husband's at work and I am the full-time childcare, so my kids are getting full attention, and then there are times when my husband takes the kids and I focus on my business, and over the course of a week, I do an internal gut check.
Does it feel balanced? Does my personal life feel balanced with my business? Do I feel like I'm balancing enough time with my family? Am I balancing enough time with my kids? Am I'm balancing enough time with my husband? Where do I need to? Reshift or re-level or reconsider my priorities and who's [00:15:00] getting too much time, who's not getting enough time, and how can I return to that feeling of balance, that feeling that everyone is getting what they need from me, including my business, including myself, including the family, my kids, my husband, all of that, right? And so I think it's really important that balance in that way. The balance in the way of everyone is getting what they need is really important.
And so I do with my clients, for example, I have some clients that get more time of mine than others, and it might be because they have a big launch going on, and so they need my eyes on their campaigns more frequently in that week. I also have some clients that get more time from me because they have bigger budgets and so we're running more campaigns and there are more moving parts, and so there's more that's required of me.
Right, and it's totally a balancing [00:16:00] act of figuring out where my attention needs to be when it needs to be there, and how I can ensure that everyone is getting what they need from me. Again, including myself. I need to balance myself in there as well. So that's the third one, and I really would like for that to, when I do have a bigger team, employees potentially, that they are balancing their work and family lives as well.
And then something that actually just like popped into my head right now is the idea of holistic marketing also fits into this balance approach and it's not holistic Marketing for me is not just marketing in one lane. It really is finding a sustainable way to have long-form content and email marketing and build a community.
It's finding those sustainable ways to market organically through collaborations and through paid traffic. Right. [00:17:00] It's balancing all of the different pieces of your marketing plan in a way that fits you and your brand authentically and is sustainable. So it's fascinating that I hadn't really seen that, and I'm just getting there now in my head.
Those are my business values. I hope that they will come out in future posts, future episodes, and future emails. So keep an eye out for my brand values. And if you haven't done this recently, go back to last week's episode because we did a lot of the look back, look forward questions and thinking about where the business has been, and where it's going.
And I've talked about it quite a few times in the last month. I just feel like I'm on repeat, so, go there and then also take some time to think about what is important to you as a person. What is important to you with [00:18:00] your customers, your clients, and what you want your brand to feel like? Looking through some of those lists, you can just Google the brand value master list kind of thing. Come up with, it's like anywhere from 50 to 300 words, depending on the list you find, and find some words that stand out to you, and then amalgamate those lists and then find the ones that come up multiple times or really, really stand out to you.
That's how I did my brand values, and I think it worked really, really well. The last thing that I wanna do in this episode just talks about some of the decisions that I've made in the past month. So the first one I kind of still, I already talked about this, but the first decision that I made was to continue accepting Facebook ads clients who seek me out and to not completely shut down the marketing of that part of my business. And so I am part of a couple of Facebook [00:19:00] groups that have monthly advertising posts and that I am active in responding to job offers and that kind of thing. So I'm gonna continue doing that because I don't know how many times I need to say it.
I love Facebook ads, so I don't really wanna shut that down. And then if and when I get inquiries, whether they're through DMS or email, I am still answering those. I'm still going on discovery calls and sending out proposals and continuing to work. So I did make that decision that I am still doing this for sure, 100%.
I am absolutely not shutting down that piece of my business. And then the other big decision that I made since the last episode was to go all in with my November holiday happiness sale, which has three different offers. And I sold Monday Minis. I've actually decided I'm going to continue to offer Monday Minis.
They are 30-minute strategy sessions for [00:20:00] $47. They're only available on Mondays. I have some morning slots and I have one evening slot. So if you are interested in a 30-minute strategy session, you can head to marketscalegrow.com/mondayminis and book your 30-minute strategy session.
I had tons of great feedback, from people who really felt like they wanted to chat with me through some sort of marketing thing, but an hour was too long, so 30 minutes just seemed like the perfect timeframe for a lot of them. And then I also offered some Voxer coaching, which was really cool. I, I did one of those packages and then the Holistic Marketing Partnership, which is still available.
I would love to continue to offer this one. Not even would love. I am continuing to offer this. Coaching package. It's a three-month [00:21:00] coaching container where we work together to really take a good look at your business, what's working, what's not working, where you wanna go, and then we create a long-term marketing plan to take what you're currently doing and build it out so that it is more holistic, more well rounded. And we do that by having that long-term action plan with short-term action steps and tasks to do so that you know exactly what to focus on and when to focus on it.
And we can take the chaotic marketing plan or the overwhelm that you might be currently facing and have a clear calm plan that's gonna move you forward step by step. So that again is a three-month partnership. We work together. There are weekly calls for that. I love opening up a Google Doc and then we together can type in it, come up with [00:22:00] these plans, co-create it, and then work together to ensure that you feel supported in implementing that plan.
So that's a holistic marketing partnership. If you're interested in that, you can go to market scale grow for or.com/holistic marketing partnership and find all of the details there. So thank you again for listening. Thank you again for being part of 2022 with me. I really, really hope that you have a fantastic holiday season, that you get to spend time with people who are important to you, that you love, and no matter where you are, that you feel warm.
I am in Canada, so it is likely there's snow outside right now as I'm recording this, in November and there will likely be a ton more snow by the time you are listening to this in [00:23:00] December. Remember that we are taking a break, so we will be off for the next three weeks and we will be back in the second week of January.
If you celebrate, I hope you have a Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah and a happy, happy New Year.
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