Podcast Branding 101, With Pia Silva

branding. What the heck does it mean? I'm going to be honest. 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 audiences 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, bad ass 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 podcasts 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 no BS 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 room and 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're just like we have no idea 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 were 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, it 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 to 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 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 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 at 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, 250,000 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 $40,000 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 re-evaluated 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 in 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 reposition 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. It was like in order to do designing where can actually have clients approve it, I had to understand what they were trying to get out 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 I 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 the 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 going to be screwed. When it comes to podcasting, for example, or branding anything in order to have that push pull and in order to command a premium price, you have to do a few things. And one of those is being super, super focused and specialized in 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 that'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 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 of 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 stand, 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 thing 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 our glass, right, branding is like the middle part. We want to like funnel everything through that middle part, right? You probably talk about 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, there is strength 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 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 to do 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 going to 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. It's 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, uh, 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, there are a lot of people are teaching agents had a girl, your agency had 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 to 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 its 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 the 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 am 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. Right. It's 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 too. 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, I don't know if this is a good, you know, and they're like, wait, wait, what did I say? I'm like, I don't know convinced me. 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 and 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 for you. 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 and figuring out where that line in the sand is for you, 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. you