Episode 265 with Laura Bull: Building a Powerful Business Brand

In this episode of the Ready Yet?! podcast, my guest is branding expert Laura Bull, who has a storied career spearheading marketing at Sony Records and authoring the bestseller 'From Individual to Empire.' We delve into the crucial differences between branding and marketing, why your brand is much more than a logo, and how to create a powerful personal brand. Laura shares her insights on blending business and creative identities, understanding your target audience, and building lasting brand loyalty. Tune in if you're ready to elevate your brand and stand out in a crowded marketplace. 

GUEST RESOURCES

Laura Bull is a bestselling author and brand strategist who has transformed countless individuals into successful business brands. After a decade at Sony Music, where she worked with artists like Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley, she now teaches others how to build powerful personal brands. Her book, From Individual to Empire, offers practical advice on creating an authentic and competitive brand. Bull is also a consultant, speaker, and adjunct professor.

https://www.thebrandmgmt.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurabullbranding

https://www.instagram.com/thelaurabull

https://www.facebook.com/LauraBullBranding

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Transcript

Episode 265 with Laura Bull: Building a Powerful Business Brand

Transcribed by Descript 

Erin Marcus: Welcome to this episode of the ready at podcast, where I finally had to hit record. Cause I can talk to today's guest forever one. Cause I love talking to her, but two because it's exactly what I'm looking for in my business right now. So I can't wait to like. Tweak a little more improvements and ideas during this conversation, but share this with an audience as well.

Erin Marcus: So Laura Bull is my guest today. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do before we dive in everything. 

Laura Bull: So I like to say that I turn people into brand names. That's basically what I've done my entire career. I was I spearheaded all of the marketing and artist development at Sony records for a decade.

Laura Bull: Then I went out on my own. Then I wrote my bestseller from individual to empire. And that's more geared to helping people figure out their authentic and powerful personal brand, how to turn it into a business brand. And so that's basically what I do. 

Erin Marcus: Love it. Love it. Love it. And what we were talking about that I was so interested in, I really think This is hard, right?

Erin Marcus: This is where I also see a lot of people get caught up. So I can't wait for your insights on this. Is this idea that we know as entrepreneurs, we need to be visible, right? If nobody knows we exist, then it's a little hard to get clients. And in today's marketplace, which is noisier and noisier than ever, it's more important than to get out there people.

Erin Marcus: If I were to meet you in real life, I'd have a nice cup of coffee with you, and then I'd go on LinkedIn and make sure you were who you said you were. It's weird, but that is like how that works nowadays. So you gotta be out there, but people don't even know where to begin because we have all these crazy ass segments to our life.

Erin Marcus: We have all these labels that we have. We don't know how they go together. We don't know how we need to show up in a certain way so people will buy something from us. And yes, all of the above. And that's the playground, that's the sandbox you play in, bad choice, bad 

Laura Bull: choice, I don't know. No, that is the sandbox I play in.

Laura Bull: No, and we tried, and that is exactly one of the biggest red flags that I see when I'm talking to somebody, usually, either entrepreneurs, creative entrepreneurs CEOs, people who are trying to become the face of the product they sell or the face of the business. If you're selling yourself like a realtor or somebody like that, that is, you are the product that you're selling.

Laura Bull: And so that's one of the biggest red flags I see is that how do you take everything about you, your personality, your lifetime of experiences, your values, your priorities how do you turn that into a Nike swoosh, right? How how do you 

Erin Marcus: turn that into a physical representation of everything you are, 

Laura Bull: right?

Laura Bull: That's insane. So that is basically what we do. And we take our clients through a big process. So it takes, three to five months to get from start to finish in a brand development project. But we start obviously with the audit phase, we don't start with logos. You don't start branding with logos.

Laura Bull: A brand is not a logo, right? It's the connection that you have with your target audience. And when you're talking about personal branding, that is much different than traditional branding. So I always say, if you're the boardroom and a jeep, and you're trying to market a jeep and you've got the boardroom of people trying to do that, they're going to sit there and put a personality onto that jeep in order to sell it.

Laura Bull: To the audience they want to sell to right so outdoorsy rugged fun, right? these are the elements that they're going to pull together, but a person already has all of these things that make them unique and Whatever that looks like right? So we go through a very big questionnaire audit phase. And we literally ask everybody For like their entire lifetime of experiences.

Laura Bull: We want to know your childhood memories. We want to know everything, but we also want to know what you want to do for the next 10 years, because marketing is really what you want to say for the next 20 days. Branding is what you want to say for the next 20 years. So you got to get it right. It's the foundation ground.

Laura Bull: Let's stop 

Erin Marcus: there for a second because I think that's really important. One of the things, for example, that I run into is people who are so scared to pick a niche, so scared to pick a lane. And I'll use the phase, fine, if you want to, if you're going to have a meltdown, let's just call it niche for now, just to get you into action, right?

Erin Marcus: You can change your mind. But I think what you said is so true. Marketing is a very, you can have a long term marketing plan, but truthfully, it's going to change 

Laura Bull: constantly. We're doing so many different things marketing wise. And that's the thing, like the difference, one example on a branding side, I'm looking at a larger target audience.

Laura Bull: On a marketing side, you can section off that audience and have this marketing campaign hit this audience, have this marketing campaign hit this audience. You have the same tone and the same voice and the same, identity, the brand identity is the same, but you can say different things, right? Your content, right?

Erin Marcus: And for me, what I always think of is I, even if I look in the last five years of my business, what I talk about has grown with me. What I talk about has changed as the market has changed. We had a pandemic in the middle of it. But my brand and how I want people to feel at the end of the day has never changed.

Laura Bull: And that's one of the, we look at purpose is one of the things that we have to have before we even figure out the target audience, because if you don't have a brand purpose, And you try to hit a target audience, if I can speak correctly then you will not be able to figure out a shared value that you have with that target audience.

Laura Bull: And a shared value, and not enough people talk about this, but a shared value is the only thing that is going to get you brand advocates and brand loyalty. That is the only thing that is going to spur. word of mouth, which is the end all and be all, right? So I think that's something that really has to, it could not be said enough.

Laura Bull: There's a difference between passion. There's a difference between purpose. If you can define your brand purpose. and therefore the target audience, then you can figure out what that shared value is between that. 

Erin Marcus: And it's, it's how do you know if you're a Jeep person or a Lexus person?

Laura Bull: Okay. So it's funny that you say that because in my questionnaire, I was actually able to pinpoint what one of my clients drove. That is how much I find out about my clients. And now it's actually a question on my questionnaire. Because everything is going to tell me about you, right? Every little thing, what you like, where do you like to shop?

Laura Bull: Because are you 

Erin Marcus: REI person or are you a Bloomingdale's? These are different people. And one of the things that I say is, how are your people supposed to know they're your people if you don't know that 

Laura Bull: they're your people? Exactly. And again, that, that shared value has to be underlying every single communication standpoint that you have.

Laura Bull: Social media, yes, but social media is just one communication channel. To get to an audience, I always say, George Clooney doesn't even have social media, but he's out there literally changing the world and one is one of the most successful influencers out there, right?

Laura Bull: There are other channels to get your message out to a specific target audience. But everything always has to have that shared value just buried in so that you know that you're actually going to connect with that audience. Or the right audience. The right audience will see it and they will connect, I should say that way.

Erin Marcus: And so where do people start? Your values I did this with my boyfriend, the value, the leader, because he's in leadership in his business and his company, so they had to do this, so him and I do this. The shared values, the cards, right? Yeah. The cards, right? So where does somebody begin? If they feel like I feel, which is basically schizophrenic.

Erin Marcus: Okay. So 

Laura Bull: obviously my book walks you through the process. What I take my clients through is a three phase process. I do the audit phase first, and then we do the brand strategy, which comes from, so the introspection, all of that comes in the first phase. And I will say that I don't like to look outside of the competition too much.

Laura Bull: We just glance enough to be able to know that we're different than them. Okay. But we do not want to get too buried into what the competition is doing because That not only will mess with your mind, especially as a creative entrepreneur, but it will also derail you because you don't know what's going on in their business.

Laura Bull: You're right. So that's the whole thing. I'll get off that soap box, but it's important 

Erin Marcus: though. 

Laura Bull: It is important. So I see that a lot. I see that problem a lot. But anyways, so then the brand strategy phase is where we come up with the brand positioning, the brand statement, the brand pillars. All the brand identity, things like that.

Laura Bull: And then we make the recommendations for the brand that needs to happen in the image, the narrative, and the product and the service. Those are the three major areas of the brand, and those all have to be saying the same thing. So then the third phase is implementation. And what I will also add is that does not mean you're ready to go out and market.

Laura Bull: Okay? You have to do the implementation of the brand first before you start spending a dime in the marketing. Okay. That's the first thing. But I do have a checklist on my website. It's just like a brand checklist for people. It's a free download. It's at the brand mgmt. com. So the brand management.

Laura Bull: com. And it's just on the main page. So you and anybody can download that. And it's a simple checklist. That'll say, okay, have you done this? Have you done this? And it's more or less what I take my clients through. And we'll make 

Erin Marcus: sure, by the way, we're going to put the links in there. So you are like one click away.

Erin Marcus: So if you didn't, Okay, 

Laura Bull: great. That's hard. But also my book. So the book is separated into three phases too. The first phase is the introspection, the positive psychology. How do you figure out all of the purpose? The positioning internally, things, strengths, things like that, all of the grit scores how do you define success?

Laura Bull: Because that will determine where you're heading, right? What, how you're building your business. The second part of the book is my brand matrix, which is. The Venn diagram, basically of image narrative and the product and the service, and what we're trying to figure out is the brand pillars right in the middle.

Laura Bull: And I can I usually use This example, when I'm explaining the brand matrix, if I were to say to you, Oh, there's this song in my head and I cannot figure it out because I've got to learn, I got to figure out who sings it. She's a powerhouse vocalist. Just a really powerful voice. Who am I thinking about?

Laura Bull: Help me think. Ariana Grande or Kelly Clarkson? Okay. It could be Whitney Houston. It could be Carrie Underwood. It could be a thousand different singers. And then I say, Oh no. She's got like this mod quality. She's British. So you go to Adele. It's Adele. So my point is that You're trying to get a matrix of adjectives, terms, whatever those pillars are that are grouped with that wind grouped together.

Laura Bull: It sets this brand apart in the marketplace. Got it. So you can't have just powerhouse vocalist, although it's true to the brand. You have to have these other elements to it to make it cohesive, communicate correctly to the audience and. 

Erin Marcus: And the other thing about this that I love so much is I think there is a, an error that entrepreneurs are making that is stifling them thinking that they have to compete with the number one person out there, right?

Erin Marcus: If you're not Tony Robbins Oh, it's already done. If you're not Gary Vee, Grant Cardone, like whoever you want, Mel Robbins, like whoever you're following. However, If you dial in the type of thing you're talking about, it becomes much easier to be in the top echelon of that world. 

Laura Bull: Yes, that's the whole point and it's funny that you say that because I always say your competition is not the person next to you, it is the superstars that are already done it, right?

Laura Bull: So it's like when you're building your brand, you should be looking at that level to level yourself up naturally. As a muse, not a Right. Inspiration. Yes. Yes. But it, but what I, but you, if you're not looking at that level, then you may not build your brand competitively enough, to compete with that level.

Laura Bull: But that's interesting. So yeah, I do think so the brand pillars and okay, so then that's the second part of the book and basically breaks down the narratives, breaks down what the image should incorporate and obviously product service, how to make that cohesive across the board, because in my experience.

Laura Bull: Entrepreneurs of all kinds have spent their entire lives trying to figure out what their product and service are, and they are really good at that part, and they're not there on the narrative of the image. So when people come to me, usually the product and the service is pretty dialed in. Yeah, it's dialed in.

Laura Bull: They've spent their entire, all their resources. It's the reason they started. Why wouldn't it be dialed in? It's the reason they started their business, right? It's the thing they love doing. 100%. Of course it's good. Exactly. And I would say 90 percent of the time people are coming to me because they have a narrative issue.

Laura Bull: Because either they've worked with a branding agency before and all they've gotten is some colors and a nice website with a pretty picture on it, but it doesn't say anything. That where's the shared values deep, if I can't see something that I'm going to value in a photo, then I may not connect in those nanoseconds that I need before I scroll on by, or something that's going to intrigue me. Especially now you got that fast. I call it the age of the narrative. And then the last part of the book is all about evolution, how to evolve, but also how to protect your personal life, your private, I call it your private narrative versus your public narrative.

Laura Bull: Because I've also seen a lot of detrimental business decisions made short sighted or not, but it. 

Erin Marcus: I, yeah, I don't, I wrongly done wrongly or incorrectly. I call it what was me marketing, right? Like you didn't, or people want to learn from your scars, not see your wounds. Yeah. Yeah. Careful about all of that.

Erin Marcus: So like, how did this become your thing? How, why is 

Laura Bull: this your world? Because when I left the label, I live, leave corporate. America and I'm working with independents and I'm working with more entrepreneurs, right? Because they're not coming into the corporate world. I, the first thing I realized is that creatives need to start looking at themselves as CEOs.

Laura Bull: They need, right? 

Erin Marcus: It's the 

Laura Bull: identity. These are not mutually exclusive identities. And the most successful people I ever worked with at the label were good marketing, branding, business people. 

Erin Marcus: Look at, 

Erin Marcus: Going page right, looking at social media and everything. There's people who are famous because they're good at marketing.

Erin Marcus: I don't know that they actually do anything . That's true. Or maybe they do now, but that's not how they literally just started 'cause they were good at the narrative. 

Laura Bull: Yeah, no, that's true. And they don't have people behind the scenes telling them what to do. Even though that's what a lot of people think.

Laura Bull: They really can do it on their own because they really. Have that business mindset when they go into whatever they go into, right? They realize that they have a hundred people that depend on them being. A good business, right? So that's the first thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed was that across the board, nobody, this is creatives, non creatives, everybody, nobody knows the difference between marketing and branding, and that drives me crazy.

Laura Bull: So I had to start letting people know there is a difference. And like I said earlier. Marketing is what you want to say for the next 20 days. Branding is what you want to say for the next 20 years. I love that. And it lines 

Erin Marcus: so much with what I say, the difference between marketing and sales. Marketing is what you're doing to create awareness of the fact you have a business.

Erin Marcus: Sales is what you, is a mutually agreed upon conversation. It's not. Throwing dm pages at me. Sales. I like that. Mutually agreed upon conversation that we are both there to decide if we want to exchange money for services. Oh, that's good. I like that. Yeah. That's so true. And it, so it's like brand is 20 years.

Erin Marcus: Marketing is 20 days. Sales is 20 minutes. I like that. That's good. Roll with it. Use it. Make a video about that tomorrow. I love 

Laura Bull: it. 

Erin Marcus: Clip it. Seriously. So what, I'm gonna just, let's do some personal stuff. Oh. One of the things I absolutely love to do is shorten people's learning curves.

Erin Marcus: I'm like, if we can do nothing except make it easier for you. What's something that in your, especially coming out of such big business, right? Like big beyond corporate. I think the entertainment industry is bigger money than most corporate jobs could even ever think about. 

Laura Bull: Yeah. And 

Erin Marcus: It is, if you look at the money that's out there.

Laura Bull: I was at the record label and ever since Napster came out, there's not so much money in the record label. No, my, my mother was a Napster felon. 

Erin Marcus: I don't, I never, it's, it, she didn't mean it. I just, She was old enough, she was young enough to learn how to do it and too old to understand what she was doing.

Erin Marcus: Did the RIAA 

Laura Bull: sue her? Is she one of the ones they sued? I don't know. But then, and then obviously iTunes decided this 99 cent song without discussing it with anybody in the entire industry. They changed the entire industry, yeah. 

Erin Marcus: What are some of the things that I'm aging myself right now.

Erin Marcus: Oh, please. That's okay, I made a reference this morning to Tom Petty's Waiting is the Hardest Part song, so I age myself constantly. What are some of the things you got wrong as you were trying to create this business for yourself? For me. For you where you can say just don't do what I did and you'll be ahead of the game.

Laura Bull: I think I wish I would have spent more time setting up my back end before signing on clients and I'm still working on that. I think that's, that should be something that you're always working on is updating, improving streamlining. My thing is streamlining. Like I should have streamlined a lot earlier but when there's You know, I've been doing this for over a decade now on my own.

Laura Bull: That's crazy to say out loud. I just, wow, it really is like way over a decade. I think that when you're just starting out, you're so busy trying to get clients. And trying to figure out your ideal client that you don't spend enough time. Like I heard something the other day that was, Oh, what is it? Like 20 percent of your time should be with clients and 80 percent of the backend sales, doing all of that.

Laura Bull: And I 

Erin Marcus: always say it's 20 percent of your time with clients, 50 percent of your time with marketing. And yeah, growing your business, 

Laura Bull: growing your business. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah. So 

Laura Bull: That's one thing. I tend to let my business side suffer because I want my clients to be a hundred percent satisfied and happy.

Laura Bull: So I give them all my time. So boundaries is also a good thing. Now that we've gotten into it. Yeah. Yeah. It's totally it. How much time do you have? I can tell you all the time. 

Erin Marcus: It's one of the best compliments. One of the compliments that just makes me laugh that I once received from a a coach that was helping me.

Erin Marcus: He's the best thing about you is you'll get out there and tell everything, everybody, everything you screwed up and say, just don't do what I did, you'll be fine. 

Laura Bull: The funniest thing about that is that my favorite book review to date was somebody, and I wish I knew who put it, but it was an Amazon review, two years ago and it was, she's like a a trusted friend that is, that's got your back looking for all the pitfalls, and that's exactly like my book is conference conversational. It's like a lot like me. I'm just going to tell you how it is, but I'm also like gonna, it's underlying intention.

Laura Bull: I think 

Erin Marcus: that, You get away with being brutally honest when the underlying intention is always to lift everybody up. I don't do, I'm not doing anybody any favors by blowing smoke up your skirt. 

Laura Bull: And that's exactly what I used to do when I taught at colleges, at SMU or wherever I would always, for instance, like I would break it down outside of the textbook and say, Hey, you're going to see a contract like this.

Laura Bull: And these are the warning signs, like red flag, protect your business, keep your copyrights, like all of those kind of things. So I've always been that way, 

Erin Marcus: and going back to what you said about the back end of the business, I think one of the things I also see, and I'm sure I've done it as well, is people tend to try to solve all business problems with marketing tactics.

Erin Marcus: Oh, yeah. They think all they need is more clients and that'll solve it. No, that'll actually just make it 

Laura Bull: crumble faster. Yeah. It just shines. They just have less time to deal with it. It's like sweeping it under the rug. No, you got to deal with it. 

Erin Marcus: Throwing money at everything is certainly seldom the right answer.

Laura Bull: Yes. Yeah. That's another thing that I see with people that don't understand their brand as clearly as they should, or they're listening to other people on how to do their brand. Like for me, I bring my clients, I'm not a coach, but I bring my clients into the process so that they see full transparency, how to do it themselves.

Laura Bull: They learn it so that they can do it themselves. They understand why things. Why they are the way they are how then that affects their business in every area, right? And then how to build their team based off of that, too. It'll help them figure out who understands it. 

Erin Marcus: And going back to where you started on what, brand and marketing is different, but, and branding is not your logo.

Erin Marcus: To me, your brand is in product delivery. Your brand is in everything that you offer. So for example, if the outcome is a three day, if the product is a three day retreat and the outcome of that retreat is a business plan, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, there's a very big difference between doing that at like the four seasons and doing that in a Airbnb in Nashville at the top of a mountain.

Erin Marcus: Like those are very different brands. 

Laura Bull: Yes. And it's about the. The emotional reaction to that brand. That's what it is. It's the connection that person's going to have with it. Do they understand it? Do they like it? Do they connect with it? I actually just delivered a brand report to a client yesterday and I was like, brand is, you need to immerse them.

Laura Bull: That's what it is. That you need to think about how this relates to sensory, smells, views, everything. So yeah. But like what, walk into a store and you hear a specific kind of music, you smell specific kind of smell. That's all. Made that's all on purpose. It's all on 

Erin Marcus: purpose. And I, as you're saying that the example that came to mind is if you walk down the Vegas strip, each hotel is a very different, 

Laura Bull: and 

Erin Marcus: you can feel it and smell it and hear it, the 

Laura Bull: second you walk in, it, and exactly.

Laura Bull: And you can see it in the people that are there as well. And that's. That's what 

Erin Marcus: you're looking for. Love it. So if people want to continue this conversation with you, what is the best way for them to get ahold of you? 

Laura Bull: Okay. So I'm on all the socials at the Laura bowl. And then my website, obviously I said earlier, www.

Laura Bull: thebrandmgmt. com. That's really the best place. Like I said, there's the brand checklist that anybody can download for free and just work through on what's the name of the book. The book is everywhere. It is from individuals. I'll hold it up from individual to empire a guide to the Authentic and powerful brand.

Laura Bull: That's still in airports It's a hardcover, but it's also ebook, audiobook, and don't worry, I did not read the audiobook. I had an actual professional do it, so you don't have to listen to me talk for eight hours or however long it is. However long it took them. But it's very, it's very fun. It's a fun read.

Laura Bull: I know it's a nonfiction and it's a business and blah, blah, blah. And there are exercises and Action steps and all to work through at the right time in the right place. But it is very, I have obviously pop culture references all over it. Chapter one is Beyonce. Chapter two is Oprah, Reese Witherspoon, Martha Stewart, Sheryl Sandberg.

Laura Bull: It's across the board, a fun, entertaining read as well. 

Erin Marcus: Thank you for hanging out with me for a while today. I think this is, it's it's heartbreaking for me, not just when I go through it, but to watch brilliant people with brilliant gifts. not be able to get and do and serve at the levels that they want.

Erin Marcus: And this is the missing. This is one of the core things that is holding them back. I think it's just so important. So a 

Laura Bull: hundred percent eager to make other people's dreams come true. That is my purpose. So love it. 

Erin Marcus: Love it. Love it. Love it. Thank you so much. 

Laura Bull: Awesome. Thanks for having me.