Brand messaging & strategy coaching for the passionate entrepreneur
 
The Brand Cure _white
 
 
BrandCure_cover_wide.png
 
 

the branding + marketing podcast // for mission-driven entrepreneurs

available on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify!

 
 
 
 
Screen Shot 2018-05-12 at 6.44.38 AM.png
 
 

Catch the latest episodes below:

 
 
 

Let's be insta-friends! // connect with ME ON INSTAGRAM >>

I hid away myself for SO long. I swept myself under the rug, into the "safe zones" of my life... ✨ I allowed my husband, my two best friends who love me unconditionally, to see the real me... and occasionally, cautiously, the friend or kind stranger I sensed might be a kindred spirit... a gentle soul, navigating life and the human experience in search of meaning. ✨ When I came online to build a business, I envied people who were fearless and 100% "authentic" to a world of strangers. ✨ I knew opening up and "being myself" would help me make a bigger impact. But I thought it was an all-or-nothing deal. Either open up and share the WHOLE ME, all at once, and be totally fearless... or don't show up at all. ✨ But that's NOT the way it works, especially if you're an introvert. If you're not used to opening up, the only way to do it is on your OWN terms, a little at a time. ✨ "BE AUTHENTIC!" the Internet shouts, and those of us who live life closely guarded, feel like there's no room for us. ✨ But there is. Take it ONE step at a time. Share your depths and true self, piece by piece. Open on your own terms. ✨ Open slowly, if you need to... there's no right or wrong in how to make this journey. But open. You were made to open. Start today 🧡 ✨ What are you doing/sharing this week to open up a little more in a way that serves your community? 👇🏼 ✨ 📸Pexels
"This is just the way we do things. It's how we've always done them!" ✨ This answer makes my brain hurt, and my palms sweat — Anyone else? 🙋🏼‍♀️ ✨ Building a brand is about doing things with intention! It means always asking yourself WHY. WHY am I doing this work? (that's a big one - check out my story from this morning to see my WHY) WHY am I using these words? WHY am I using this imagery? WHY am I marketing my business this way? WHY am I using this platform? WHY is my website structured this way? WHY is this my client intake process? WHY do I onboard clients this way? WHY do I run my projects like this? WHY is this my wrap-up process? ✨ Yea... you do start to feel like a curious toddler who can't ask WHY enough times. 👧🏼 ✨ But when you find a question you don't have a thoughtful answer for, what you've really found is an OPPORTUNITY! An area of your business or brand that could be much more STRATEGIC. An area you can be more intentional about, to get (and deliver) BETTER RESULTS. ✨ Here's a question I'm asking myself today: WHY am I on stories so often lately? Answer: Because I preach showing up as you are, even if it's scary, and I'm PRACTICING what I preach! ✨ Because my dream client wants that real CONNECTION with someone before she reaches out! ✨ Because the FRIENDS I've made here are such an important part of my journey, and my daily happiness. They bring so much light to my day. 🧡 ✨ (P.S. if you want someone to ask you ALL the right questions about your brand and your biz, and really help you dive deep and create YOUR strategy for success, remember there are ONLY 2 SPOTS remaining in Brand your Brilliance! DM me for the deets ✌🏼) ✨ Have you ever asked yourself "WHY am I doing things this way" and then made a change? What WHY question can you ask yourself today? 👇🏼
I am a master FEAR-CRASTINATOR. ✨ Being "busy" all the time but not seeing progress. Filling my day with tasks that feel productive. Waiting until conditions are perfect. Feeling relief when I postpone a task another week. Seeing it still on my to-do list a month later. Wondering why I keep putting things off. Doubting myself and wondering if I'll ever reach my goal. ✨ Have you ever gotten stuck in the cycle of fear-crastination?? A few months ago, I didn't even realize it was happening - I just knew I was FRUSTRATED with myself, and getting burnt out. ✨ But NOW I recognize the signs. When I see them, I go find the biggest, ugliest, SCARIEST thing on my to do list and just DO IT. ✨ And then I go treat myself to a soy chai latte and an hour to do whatever I want. ✨ What are you fear-crastinating on? What has been on your to-do list for weeks and weeks? What are you putting off because it scares you? Because it might not go well? It's time to TACKLE that fear monster and take it down. ✨ Go put that scary thing on your calendar for THIS WEEK. Maybe it's getting on IG STORIES for the first time. Maybe it's calling that local venue to SCHEDULE your first workshop. Maybe it's showing up LIVE in your Facebook group. ✨ If it's going to take you an hour to do the scary thing, schedule that hour, and then block off the next hour to do whatever you want. If it's gonna take you three hours, schedule a little more time. ✨ The things that scare us are the things that will catapult us forward the FASTEST. They're the most important to PROGRESS. And you'll feel more comfortable tackling the NEXT scary (but awesome) thing, and the NEXT one, and the NEXT one. ✨ What's the thing that scares you that YOU are going to do in the next week?? I want to cheer you on!! 👇🏼
"I won't be good at that - I'm too introverted." ✨ Meeting new people Initiating conversations Running a Facebook group Posting on Instagram Coaching Teaching Leading workshops Being on video Hosting a podcast Interviewing guests Opening up on social media Leading a challenge Doing live video Being a guest speaker ✨ These are all things I thought I COULDN'T DO because I'm an introvert. Because I'm shy. Because I can be awkward. Because I have performance anxiety. Because I blush when I'm nervous. Because I lose my train of thought sometimes. Because I'm more of a "behind the scenes" person. ✨ And then slowly but surely, I did ALL of them. ✨ And you know what? I survived, and I'm actually pretty good at them... just NOT in the way I expected. ✨ To paraphrase one of my clients (an executive leadership coach for women in STEM): YOU can REDEFINE any role you want to step into, on your OWN TERMS. Fulfill it in your OWN WAY. ✨ YOU have what it takes to do to anything you want to do. To lead. To inspire. And you don't have to do it like anybody else. You don't have to have a booming voice, or a commanding stage presence, or make everything look easy. ✨ Personally, I believe the world needs MORE LEADERS LIKE YOU. More people who speak up -- not because it's easy, but because they're BRAVE. ✨ More people who prove to the rest of us that the way you talk, or dress, or move effortlessly across the online stage isn't what matters. It isn't about YOU at all. It's about the way people feel about THEMSELVES when you're around. ✨ And no one else can do it quite like you can. All it takes is stepping up, being WILLING to try, and doing that thing with heart and purpose. In the only way you can. By being YOU - perfectly imperfect. ✨ So... what's ONE THING you thought you couldn't do at the start of your journey, that you've actually DONE? Bonus points: How do you do it differently from anyone else? 👇🏼
WHERE does your brand LIVE? If you had to go point to it with your finger, where would it BE? ✨ On your hard drive? On your website? In your social media feed? In your journal? In your words? ✨ Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope! ✨ Your brand lives in your customer's BRAIN. 🤓 Imagine walking down its corridors. The walls are lined with stacks of hobbies, dreams, memories, feelings, beliefs about the world... and in its tidy little corner, sits your brand. ✨ It's where she stores all her experiences with you, her beliefs about you, her thoughts and feelings about you - all the intangibles that make up what you mean to her and what you represent in her mind. What does she believe about you? What does she love about you? What does she WONDER about you? ✨ Look closer... see all the individual IMPRESSIONS that your words, your visuals, your customer experience, have left over time. Which experiences STAND OUT the most? ✨ Was it that time you took an extra minute of your time to thoughtfully answer her question? Was it that story you posted on Instagram that made her feel less alone? Was it the random reference you made to her favorite TV show? ✨ If we can stop thinking about marketing as a chore, and start thinking about it as building a relationship with our customer, it takes on so much more meaning and is SO much more powerful for our business, AND our customer. ✨ It's time, you're ready -- to shine your LIGHT, raise your VOICE, leave an IMPRESSION, and THRIVE by being you 🧡 ✨ If you found the corner in your customer's brain where you brand lives, what specific memories would be there?👇🏼
We almost didn’t get her. ✨ Chris and I really wanted a puppy. For weeks, we watched @co_puppy_rescue, flipping through puppy photos, pointing out the cutest ones to each other.. until we saw puppy #806. 11 weeks old, shy, awkward, looking very confused. And to us, 100% ADORABLE. ✨ In the days leading up to the adoption event, we were so excited...but also nervous that a new puppy might accidentally hurt our little cat Lilah. ✨ The morning of the adoption event, we decided not to go get her. We were too worried about how she'd interact with Lilah, so we went to breakfast instead. We were sitting at the table, looking at each other sadly...and I had this sudden thought. ✨ “What if we go get her, and then she becomes such a big part of our lives, we can’t believe we almost missed her?” ✨ Chris had the same feeling. We packed up our food and rushed to the adoption event, knowing that it was first-come, first-served. ✨ Puppy #806 was in a big kennel with her siblings. They were all barking and wrestling, but 806 was sitting quietly behind them, looking worried, out of place. ✨ We anxiously waited for our turn. When it came, we asked to meet puppy #806, sat down with her, and fell instantly in love. ✨ Fast forward to today—Penny is 90 pounds of gentleness and love. If Lilah sneezes, Penny panics and rushes to see what’s wrong. If two dogs are playing too rough at the park, Penny wedges her body between them. If we hand her a treat, she takes it carefully and softly, so no one gets hurt. ✨ We can’t imagine our lives without her. Deep down, that morning, we knew puppy 806 was our girl. ✨ You KNOW what the next step is. You may hesitate, question your intuition, and have legitimate hangups or fears for pursuing what your heart wants.. but when in doubt, choose LOVE, and what brings your heart joy. ✨ What was one time you chose love? ✨ Flip through to see photos from the day we brought our girl home 🧡
I'm making a prediction: that you'll THRIVE this year, by being YOU. ✨ You'll get the best results for your biz when you lean into who YOU are. You'll adopt some people's tools and methods, use the ones you like, modify others to fit, and "pass" on the rest. ✨ You'll find or create your OWN path to success, one that feels right for YOU. You'll discover that you are who you are, for a reason. ✨ That's WHY I do this work... helping you peel back the layers, to discover your own voice, mission, and internal compass, so you can BE YOU ON PURPOSE (to paraphrase Dolly Parton). Learning to TRUST YOURSELF is the most powerful thing you can do for your business. ✨ Because I believe you are here not to fit in, but to make a DIFFERENCE, in your own way. To be UNAPOLOGETICALLY YOU. As you lean into who you are, you'll naturally draw the right people to you, through your own unique gifts, honest voice, and heartfelt message. ✨ Because YOU are meant for MORE than the status quo. You have so much more to offer the world than just more of the same. You have people to inspire, and NEW WAYS of doing things. ✨ So, what's ONE AREA in your business where you're committing to do things YOUR way? Claim it in the comments, I wanna know 💕👇🏼
2018: The year of uncontrollable FLAILING. ✨ ALL year long, I was totally out of my element. Again and again, as a new business owner, I had to learn a new skill, something I had never done before, and be okay with publicly sucking at it. ✨ I wasn't naturally good at posting on social media. I wasn't naturally good at networking. I wasn't naturally good at stepping into the spotlight. I wasn't naturally good at being on video. ✨ But I had to do it, and so I did it! ✨ And of all the things I got better at, the new skill I'm most grateful for is the skill of LEARNING. I got pretty damn good at trying something new, and accepting that I was just gonna be awful at it for a while, and that was okay! ✨ Miraculously, I learned how to show up on Instagram stories without having a minor panic attack every time. I wanted to make quick strides, so I joined a 30-day Challenge, committed to posting every day, felt extremely uncomfortable for the first few days, and within a couple weeks I felt SO much more comfortable and competent, and even started seeing results in my growth and engagement. ✨ Being good at learning DOESN'T mean you're good at things the FIRST time you start them. It means you do things EVEN when you're bad at them. Even when you're AWFUL at them. ✨ And because you've endured the learning process enough times, you know that sucking is just part of the process. ✨ What new skill do YOU want to learn? Drop it in the comments 👇🏼I want you to CHALLENGE yourself to do a little every day, for 30 days. If you can, find a group to hold you accountable! ✨ And if you wanna get better at Instagram, I'm kicking off a new Shine on Social 30-day Challenge that's perfect for you! We've got an amazing mix of entrepreneurs, and we're starting THIS Monday, January 7! ✨ Send me a DM or check the link in my bio for details. Everyone else, be sure to let me know what new skill you're learning, so I can cheer you on! 👇🏼
What if I lose CONTROL? ✨ This was my mindset for so long. Every day, every night, I lived in fear that I'd lose control and... what? I'd die? Lose everything? The world would END? ✨ I don't even know WHAT I was so afraid would happen. But after years in corporate, with potential million-dollar-contracts depending on me NOT screwing up... this was the ONLY way I knew how to live. And it spread into EVERY area of my life... ✨ I was on a call with @_theskyinside_ when I realized this for the first time. She created SPACE for me to slow down, and see the source of my anxiety... and there it was, staring me in the face. ✨ The months that followed gave me so many lessons in ACCEPTANCE, and patience... there were wins, there were losses... AND YET the world kept spinning. Life kept happening. The universe kept unfolding into space. ✨ The world is NOT MINE to control. I'm here as a witness, to experience, and help others on their journey as best I can. I set intentions, work toward them in the best way I know how, and hold my hands open to accept life as it unfolds. ✨ The New Year is a time to decide what we want, and grab hold of our dreams. But at the same time.. do you need to loosen your grip on something? Is there something YOU need to let go of this season? . PC: Carole Smile on Unsplash . .
What will people think? ✨ I tried to meet everyone's expectations. My family, my friends, my coworkers... even people I barely knew! ✨ I thought pursuing my passions would invite judgment, disapproval, and disappointment. And I WORRIED that those feelings would deflate and derail me. ✨ But 2018 was the year I finally pushed past that fear and took ACTION. Most people were excited and HAPPY for me. And the few who seemed skeptical or doubtful... suddenly, it didn't really matter. I was already on my way. ✨ NO ONE has the authority to tell you how to live! And once you trust YOURSELF to go your own way, you'll realize how little the negative opinions matter. My mom gave me some great advice: when anyone doubts your ability to do something hard, just tell them to "watch and marvel." ✨ So let's forget what anyone else thinks, and start taking ACTION towards our goals. ✨ This is your LIFE. You only get one. ONE! Don't let fear of anything keep you from living it. ✨ What are YOU going to make happen in 2019 no matter what anyone thinks? 👇🏼
I woke up and started crying. ✨ I was burnt out and pushing myself to the point of exhaustion. Basically, I was treating myself like a ROBOT and expecting myself to work weeks on end, months and months of 60+ hour weeks, and still be okay. ✨ And surprise, surprise: I was NOT OKAY. ✨ I was miserable. And even though my brain wouldn't admit it, my BODY was showing the signs. My hands, arms, and neck were in constant pain. I had such terrible anxiety, my husband Chris had to put me in the car and drive me around in the middle of the night just to calm me down in the middle of a panic attack. ✨ I had so much work, I had to operate at 100% capacity and efficiency ALL THE TIME to hit every deadline and do everything perfectly. ✨ If you are treating yourself this way, OR someone else is, LISTEN: THIS IS NO WAY TO LIVE. You need to make a change and start accepting yourself as you are: a living, breathing human who needs REST, who makes mistakes, who says the wrong thing, who feels uncomfortable feelings, who needs time and space to try things and figure stuff out. ✨ And as a human, you are CREATIVE, you imagine new possibilities, you feel things, you have a world inside you that goes on to INFINITY. And you need time and space to explore all this potential, to make mistakes, and to learn and grow. A robot may be able to "get more done," but you have SO MUCH MORE to offer. ✨ Have you ever burnt out because you were treating yourself like a machine, expecting perfection? Are you doing it now? What's ONE THING you can do that a robot never could? And what's ONE WAY you're going to allow yourself to be a human this week? ✨ ✨ ✨
"I don't have anything to say." ✨ I used to think this was true. Staring at the blinking cursor and repeating this to myself, I felt like a fraud! ✨ Successful people START with something to say, right? Divine inspiration strikes them like lightning from the sky, and THEN they're compelled to share it with people? ⚡️ ✨ At least, this is what I thought happened. I felt like I didn't have the right to speak up or share my thoughts until I had something unique and mindblowing to say, and perfect clarity about what that was. ✨ But this is totally NOT how it works! Experts start at the very bottom, just like us, with a crazy dream and...not much else. They don't know exactly where they're going. They "act as if" for however long it takes, until they find their voice. ✨ Before Oprah became Oprah, she was a news anchor in Nashville, reading off a teleprompter. Before Marie Forleo became Marie Forleo, she wrote a book about dating. Before Tony Robbins became Tony Robbins, he worked as a promoter for another speaker. ✨ It takes time to discover and settle on what you really have to say! Even the greats have to go through the early stages of taking clumsy, imperfect action to keep moving forward, learn about the world, and find their place in it. ✨ If you're second-guessing yourself and whether you have anything worthwhile to share, STOP right there! ✨ You have to get out there and take action, speak your truth right now, because the world NEEDS it. Right now. Even if it's messy. Even if you change your mind next week. The recipe for clarity is action, patience, and paying attention over time. ✨ Even if you're stilling finding your voice, tell me in ONE sentence -- what is the BEST thing that could happen in someone's life if you share what you have to say TODAY? 👇🏼 ✨ ✨ ✨
 
Screen Shot 2018-05-12 at 6.44.38 AM.png
 
 

want more?

check out the blog!

You look thirsty! Is it because you have an insatiable appetite for branding + marketing strategy? Check out my blog, which features some of my older content! It’s aging like fine wine in the blog archive.