109: How to Know if Your Branding is Strong (and how to fix it if not), With Pia Silva

This episode of Grow the Show is sponsored by Riverside.fm, the leading platform to record studio quality podcasts from anywhere. More than 70,000 other podcasters use Riverside, including myself, GuyRaz, GaryVee, companies like Spotify, and even the New York Times. What's amazing about Riverside is that when you're recording a podcast or a remote interview, the recording quality is independent of Wi-Fi stability, which is huge. Your content is recorded locally, which ensures reliable and uncompressed content quality. It's basically a studio inside your browser, and it is super intuitive and easy to use. Once your recording is done, you'll automatically be able to download separate audio and video tracks and edit your content all with a few clicks. So if you haven't yet, give Riverside a try. Visit Riverside.fm and use my code Grow15 that's GROW15 to start recording studio quality sound and video and get 15% off a membership plan. Branding, what the heck does it mean? I'm going to be honest, and it's a little fuzzy. You hear about branding all the time in the business world, but to me, it feels like every time I hear somebody talk about it, I'm less sure of what it means and how to do it right. And this is tough because I do personally help podcasters all the time who are, quote unquote, rebranding. And in fact, a lot of the students in the Grow the Show accelerator program decide to rebrand their podcast after they join the program and get more clarity behind who their audience is and what they really want the show to be. Sometimes I see this happen quickly. A podcaster rebrands and totally nails it. And I kind of wonder how the heck it worked out so well. Other times I see podcasters waste months. And I mean months rebranding only to not really change anything. They spend tons of time taking the right headshot for their cover photo and going back and forth on podcast names and they come out of this month long rebrand with less clarity. What's even more common is that I see podcasters who do have great content and even have a fairly solid grip on who their audience is, but their brand sucks. So how can we fix all this and how can we have a better understanding of what podcast branding is or even just what branding is, how it affects our success as podcasters and whether or not our podcast brand is actually effective or whether we need to rebrand our podcast. And if we do need to rebrand our podcast, how the heck do we do that? So that our branding actually represents the ethos and the impact that we want our show to have on our listeners. Today's the day we get those questions answered. That's because today we're joined by an absolute branding expert. And I know I know a lot of the people in your life call themselves branding experts, but this one is the one who teaches the branding experts. Her name is Pia Silva. She is an author who wrote the book Badass Your Brand. She's a Forbes columnist. She's done a TED Talk and here's the kicker. She is a podcaster who just a couple months ago rebranded her podcast. How does the branding expert go about rebranding their podcast? Today you're going to learn how. This is Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schmidlett and my mission is to help you the independent podcaster to grow your audience and monetize faster so that you can have a thriving podcast business. Today we are going to draw a line in the sand and discover what the heck branding means and what it means for our podcasts. You're going to learn if your podcast's brand is really up to snuff and if it's not you're going to learn exactly how to fix it. All that with Pia Silva is now on Grow the Show. My name is Pia Silva. I am a partner and brand strategist at Worst of All Design and the co-founder of NoBS agencies. Today Pia is a New York City branding guru but 10 years ago things were pretty different for her. Back then she and her now husband Steve were freelancers trying to find their way and like many freelancers they were really burnt out. So their solution was something that a lot of overworked people dream about. We bought a one-way ticket to Tortola and Island in the British Virgin Islands to live on a farm and trade our labor for quote-roman board. We like camped out on this guy's farm and ate off of his land and we did that because we had both been kind of freelancing for years and you know working our butts off and just kind of trying to figure out like what do we want this life to be like. We had just gotten engaged and we just said maybe this would be cool like let's go on this adventure. We didn't even speak to this farmer before we went. We were just like we have no idea what we're getting into and we had this four-month adventure. That adventure really was straight out of many burnt out people's daydreams. I mean we really did work for a few hours every morning and then we just read all day and hitchhiked around this island and went to all of these you know idyllic beaches and it was also really eye-opening. People do think that that's living the dream. I'm a big beach person that sounded like paradise to me. But just two weeks after Pia reached paradise and the novelty wore off she had a really uncomfortable realization. She felt exactly the same inside. I literally remember sitting on the beach and just starting to sob because I realized oh my gosh she doesn't matter where I am. I'm going to still have all the feelings I have everywhere. I'm going to feel stressed and I'm going to feel happy and I'm going to feel sad and I'm you know it's this is not a fix. You'd think it would be devastating to sit in the middle of paradise without a care in the world and still feel stressed right. But actually that's not how Pia felt. She was actually really glad. It was great be actually because it burst the bubble of thinking that there was some other place that would or some other way of living and being that was going to make me happy and it was like a very big realization like you're either they're happy and content with things or you're not and then everything else is just external. With that Pia and Steve bought another one way ticket. This time they went to a place that is the exact opposite of Tortola. They went home. We realized there we like Brooklyn like we're not going to live here. This is not cool but this is getting old and we really want to go back and like build our own pyramid and that that was the beginning of our business. That business that they were about to start was a branding design business and they named it worst of all designs. Now you're probably thinking what a lot of Pia's friends and colleagues thought when they heard that name. But what if people think you're bad at what you do? That name choice however was very intentional and it proves that Pia and Steve are actually really good at what they do. We help people stand out and stand apart from the sea of sameness and you know what doesn't stand out saying we help you stand out. So our philosophy is you need to be your brand and being worst of all design is a really big smack in the face that we do things differently without using the word different or stand out or all the other jargon. But the real reason that we're worst of all design is because my husband and partners last name is Wasterval and it is the stoner nickname he got at UC Boulder. With a name and a vision it was time to book their first clients the challenge finding those clients. I started on Craigslist just scrolling Craigslist all day long that was all I knew and you know I we did all right I mean Steve and I were both working all the time we were taking all projects we're doing everything we were generating enough income we were joining more than we needed but we were working all the time we didn't really have a business I didn't know that the time we were just kind of freelancing for everybody. Pia and her husband were working 24 seven and even though they were making decent money they were exhausted. So in 2014 about a year after starting their business they made what seemed like a logical choice. We ended up hiring two people we got an office right now we've got a lot of overhead now we have to generate more income and so three years into our business we have this office that I'm still sitting in today we have this big beautiful office we have two employees we had generated that last 12 months about 240 to 150 thousand dollars everything sounds like it's going great right wrong after hiring their employees Pia and her husband learned a really tough lesson we were in debt because everything is so expensive so we were in 40 thousand dollars of debt and we had no credit to our name we had no savings like we were completely painted into a corner and so we got to this breaking point we had to let our employees go and that was a relief it was so sad and I felt like such a failure at that moment but it was the only thing I had no money to pay them so we had to let them go. This Brooklyn adventure that Pia and Steve had embarked on seemed like it was going to be a complete flop they were in debt and they had no employees but they didn't give up just yet. Steve and I put ourselves through a process much like we were putting our clients through and kind of reevaluated the whole business and said what are we trying to build here like what do we want this to look like what do we want our lifestyle to look like and what's the end goal and the end goal for us was just flexibility and freedom it actually wasn't building some big agency I just had not really thought about it and I just kind of assumed that building a big agency was the only way to get freedom and flexibility when in reality it actually constructed everything now I was beholden to my employees I had to make all this money just to pay them so it kind of had the opposite effect and that's when I realized we can make a lot more money by ourselves. At the same time Pia came to that realization she also remembered some advice she got from a business coach a while back when she was struggling to find clients. I told him I can't find these $30,000 clients nobody has that money that kind of money and he said well you know a lot of people like what could you sell them like what do they want I was like they have like $3,000 what am I going to do for $3,000 he said what could you do for $3,000 and I said well I mean we could do like a one day something you know like we could work for them for a day and Steve is pretty fast we could probably do a lot of stuff in a day but that would be it I didn't even tell anybody because I didn't think I could make money off of a $3,000 one day so you know we're in this corner we need to make money and I'm looking at this thing and I'm like you know that thing really checks all the boxes that is so easy to sell it's clear now that we don't have all this overhead like $3,000 a day we should do that and so we completely repositioned our business like overnight we said we only work with small businesses doing these $3,000 one days $5,000 two days. Pia and Steve repositioned their business and carved out a really specific niche for themselves instead of trying to look like every other branding agency that are all over New York City they were going to do what worked for them they were a two person micro agency who does affordable quick branding for small businesses they had discovered their superpower I went back to all my clients that weren't closing with the proposals for the $30,000 projects and I said hey that proposal is no longer valid but I could do the same thing for you know a tiny fraction of the cost and they all closed I mean we generated so much cash in the months after that because it was such an easy sell because it was so clear and specific it was easy to remember was easy to tell other people about it was a very new thing and after years of successful branding gigs Pia learned a ton and since then she's written a book she's done a TED Talk she's gotten a column in Forbes and she's even started her own podcast all the links to those things are in the show notes clearly Pia knows what she's doing and I'll admit that before reading her book and conducting this interview I didn't know what I was doing when it came to branding that word is used so often online and on social media that it's lost a lot of its meaning for me and a lot of other people too I mean heck I really didn't even understand if I needed to focus on branding at all for my podcast or my business I just figured it was an afterthought turns out I was dead wrong I kind of became a business consultant through the act of trying to help people with their brands because how you price your services is part of your positioning and if you don't understand how to price your services or how you deliver them all of these things are part of what make you the brand that you are so I often found myself being like okay we need to fix this thing first so we can build you a brand that makes you look authoritative and premium and luxury because you know what the way you're operating the way you're selling this the way you're packaging at the way you're pricing it none of that is luxury so you want to be luxury but your business isn't luxury was like in order to do design you can actually have clients approve it I had to understand what they were trying to get at and why so then I started asking those questions and then when we were doing that I was realizing there were all these business problems and it was like okay we need to fix that too so all of it happened organically in order to just get clients to approve design work that's really how it all happened it was all out of a need same thing with a podcast you could have the best growth strategy in the world but if your show isn't a great premise doesn't have a great premise you're gonna be screwed when it comes to podcasting for example or branding anything in order to have that push pull and in order to command premium price you have to do a few things and one of those is being super super focused and specialized and being that expert so you can rise above all the generalists and when you do that and you pair it with a specific point of view and you have all these different pieces of your brand and your positioning that are clear and specific that's when you really take up real estate in somebody's mind so you can have the most beautiful podcast square in the world if it's not clear what makes you different and special and who you're talking to and why we should care what you have to say versus everybody else it's going to come up with a very similar name on the podcast search it's not going to be worth anything to the people who are potentially listening to it and they're not going to listen and that's true for business too it turns out brand design and business success are really intertwined which means that finding a specific niche is crucial to having a great brand and a great podcasting business so step one to building a badass brand and a badass podcast business is honing on your niche I talk about this all the time I feel like all I say is be more specific about your audience but there are actually parts of developing your niche that I have not discussed yet and there are parts that are crucial to having a badass podcast brand so when I'm trying to figure out someone's brand I actually want to understand the bigger picture what they want in life what they want to do with their business I'm usually working with some of the information about how is this going to eventually monetize and what's the greater goal there how do you want to be perceived by your audiences and I think this is the piece that a lot of branding people don't do so if you're hiring someone to do branding and they're not asking you about the bigger picture of your business then they are probably doing more of a superficial like I'm trying to figure out your colors like oh you want to be happy so you know so do you say that this color is happy so we should do it that way right and I'm looking more like what's the bigger goal and and how are we going to make a brand that's really going to say that and what are you willing to say and who are you willing to repel yeah I always say like a badass brand is not really defined as what it is as much as what it does a badass brand I define as having two critical characteristics one it repels people as much as it attracts them you cannot have raving fans if you aren't willing to be disliked by others or misunderstood now nobody sets out with the goal of being disliked especially when starting a podcast right you need people to like you to become your listeners and you probably started this whole thing because you want people's love and adoration right let's call a spade a spade we want attention so when thinking about this it can be really difficult to figure out how you are willing to repel people I think when you ask people like what do you stand for I think they give really lame answers and most branding people ask you what you stand for it's like I stand for like honesty and I stand for like customer service and I really care about people want want and so what I like to ask people is what do you stand against like what do you hate what do you think is lame or wrong about your industry like what are you trying not to be and I find that if you ask yourself that you'll get much more interesting answers and you don't have to have a negative spin right like we're no BS and badass brands without the BS and worst of all design you don't have to have that but you can still find like what's the more interesting that's still true to you which will be the opposite of something that you really hate so what do you stand against so to recap step one of building an amazing brand is finding your niche but finding your niche isn't just about knowing your audience in order to really do this first step the right way you also have to examine your show and honestly get honest with yourself about what you're willing to stand for and stand against so now that you have all that information about your audience your show and yourself you'll be able to move to step two and create your podcasts brand identity so when I explain branding like think about a hourglass right branding is like the middle part we want to like funnel everything through that middle part right you probably talk all kinds of principles and strategies and business theories and I do too but our brands are very specific about who we're speaking to it's through the lens of helping podcasters it's through the lens of helping small branding agencies on top of that mine is through the lens of being no BS cutting out the crap like not giving a you know whatever it's about having restraint not putting all the pieces in so yeah the restraint of my brands going to be this one specific thing even though I have a lot more to offer and I think if you're like oh it's not right or it's not there it's probably because you are somewhere trying to fit all this other stuff in instead of just having those straight and saying I'm going to own this piece here and I'm going to go all the way with it you know I think branding is like this little thing that's unique to you and I say you pull it out of yourself and you make it a billboard that's your brand all right so step two use what you learned from step one to craft a super unique super specific point of view it's a filter that colors every single part of your podcast step three is going to be applying that filter to every part of your podcast that looks a little different for everyone depending on your brand and your niche and until now a lot of what we're talking about has been pretty theoretical right so I'm sure you're wondering how does this actually apply to me and my podcast well luckily for us we can share an exact example because Pia recently totally rebranded her podcast and so I asked her to give us an inside look at how she rebuilt her own brand and applied it to her business so that we can see what that rebranding process might actually look like for real first she actually had to take a look back to see how her brand had evolved and so she put herself and her brand under the microscope I was trying to figure out what my next move was and I wanted to coach people on building authority because I had built I published this book myself I self published it right I got my Forbes column myself I got this TED talk because of my books so I was like I know how to build authority without connection so I wanted to teach the authority piece and I also wanted to get a little away from the badass thing because you know when we started saying it in 2013 14 it was a really edgy and now it's like every marketing woman says badass somewhere on their site she figured out that her old brand didn't fit much with her goals anymore or with what she stands for it had to go so now she had to redefine her specific point of view I just was thinking it's time for me to evolve so my podcast was show your business whose boss which is not you know the whole boss thing is also a little bit overdone but it felt like it was edgy enough so show your business whose boss was kind of me moving into this next iteration of my brand and it was like a big decision to go all in on teaching this method and believing even though I know this believing that we're going to be enough one two person branding agencies out there to build a scalable business that I was going to that would want to learn this method so it was just a lot of things and I ended up going all in on it again like night and day but it took me a whole year to rebrand my podcast because I just couldn't let go of the idea of okay I'm gonna go all in but not like that all in let this be a lesson that all of us even the experts are humans Pia advises her clients to go all in and stand for something but that is easier said than done and after a year she found herself still waffling after a year of waffling back and forth she recognized that she was falling into the same trap that she helps others escape I was like what am I doing this podcast needs to be no BS agencies the no BS agencies podcast what's crazy about a scary decision is that you spend tons of time waiting being afraid and going back and forth your gut tells you what you should do but your mind warns you of everything that could go wrong and hopefully eventually the gut wins and you do finally go all in and commit to something and when that does happen what's crazy is that that moment is euphoric once I made the decision I felt so good about it just oh this is so much more me and you know I have a lot of sales calls and I talked to a lot of people and I asked them why me and they all say they're like a lot of people are teaching agents how to grow your agency how to do the only person who speaks in this voice I love your no BS thing and I love how you're so specific about like agency my size and not getting employees and growing and scaling it without employees like that trifecta nobody else is owning that space so you want to understand what a brand is I own that space you know I am taking this real estate and I'm going to like blitz the world with no BS agencies and it will be mine and so when I like when you're thinking about a brand that's how I like to think about it when I'm working with clients too I'm like is this onable and could you really dominate this and it be your thing and if I see yes it gets me super excited I'm like you have to do that that is totally onable so she owned it she changed her business name and it's logo and she changed her podcast too I changed the format I was doing these very long interviews because the show your business whose boss format was all interviews with my favorite business owner friends and we were just shooting this shit for an hour so it was very much coffee talk so people really liked that but because of my business model and what I'm actually trying to do and how I want the podcast to bring people into my Facebook group and bring people into my world so that if they're a good fit they might end up joining our program and really learning the ins and outs of this model because of that I felt like I'm going to be talking more specifically about this niche I was being less more general before but also it's so easy to record solo episodes just me talking for 20 minutes I can do that all day long so it's going to be way easier on me if I do mostly solo episodes and I'm just like sharing insights and concepts that I know these people are hot to listen to and so I'm doing an interview every like four episodes and they're going to be much more on topic and they're not going to be they're not going to take an hour and a half of my time which was a lot of time this makes total sense right a coffee podcast wouldn't make sense for a no BS brand a no BS brand would cut right to the chase so after you've examined your brand name your design your format and your social media presence the last thing that you need to rebrand is your audience the people that you serve they have to fit your brand to and the best way to figure out who does and doesn't fit your brand is using one word no it's addictive you can say no because by saying no like no this isn't a good fit you can say no by raising your prices you can say no by niching no I don't work with you I only work with these people and I don't do it manipulatively but I'm very quick to say no because I know when they are a good fit they want it even more so I'm liberal with my use of no you know it's like oh I don't know if this is a good you know and they're like wait wait wait what did I say I'm like I don't know convince me yeah so I just think it's a really powerful word and it's the opposite of what everyone is expecting because most people out there are like come back come back like let me convince you that this is so good for you and it's just kind of weak and lame you know I had like Facebook ad people coming in an SEO people and photographers and you know what this model just isn't right for you they get a lot of value from me but they take up my energy because it doesn't map exactly and I tell people also I am not for you if you are hell bent on building a big agency with team members you can use my model as a stepping stone to get there but if that's what you want I don't know how to do that I didn't do that successfully I don't want to do that and that is a great repeller of the wrong people but I will tell you that I have lots of people who are not agency owners listening to my podcast and they tell me yes you know I'm not a small branding agency but everything you're saying totally relates to me and I like how you say it so don't worry about turning those people off they'll like it even more it's a scary thing I don't believe anyone it's scary to say my no I'm not free it's scary to say no what advice do you have for somebody who's still afraid to draw that line in the sand it is scarier to be boring and forgettable that's all I'll say that is scary so there you have it if you're having trouble figuring out who your podcast is for try figuring out who your podcast is not for say no draw a line in the sand because if you don't and you try to make your show appeal to anyone and everyone it's going to be boring and forgettable and that is not a growable show note that at no point in this discussion did we talk about colors or album artwork or anything like that your podcast brand is about what you and your show stands for now if you'd like support in figuring out where that line in the sand is for I invite you to join us in the grow the show Facebook group that's where we have over 2000 growth-minded podcasters many of whom have recently rebranded and all of whom are ready to help you figure out who your podcast isn't for and if you're rebranding or about to we can help you with that too just click the link in the show notes and make a post asking for help I'll see you there grow the show is a Q9 production this episode was produced by me and Catherine nails with post production by Jeremy Bishop and a very special thanks to Amy Sheridan and of course Pia Silva for grow the show my name is Kevin Schmidland see you next time