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When you think about your personal brand, I like to think about it like you're a conductor in an orchestra. Even as you grow your business and potentially grow to more locations, and certainly as you grow your team, you are still a critical part of the image of your business and it can be beneficial for many of you to decide, depending on what your goals are, so that you can decide if Is it worth it to really double down on my personal brand? Welcome to the MedSpa CEO podcast where I teach you how to grow and scale your med spa or aesthetic practice so that you can have the income and impact you know you were meant for without overwhelm, stress or feeling like you have to sacrifice your personal life and happiness to do so. It's totally possible for you and your business. Plus simpler than you think. Keep listening to find out how. Welcome, my friend, to another episode of the podcast. I am super pumped you are joining me today. We are talking about today developing a personal brand. This is actually a question that I get asked about a bunch from the med spa and aesthetic clinic owners that I work with. Should I have a personal brand? If I do have a personal brand, how should that integrate with the brand of the med spa or the esthetic clinic? Should it be integrated? Do I have separate social medias? Do we keep it together? All of those things and more we're going to unpack today because really, truly having a personal brand has a lot of benefits that even if you had asked me 10 years ago, certainly 10 years ago, but even five years ago, my answer would probably have been different than the answer I'm gonna talk through today. There's this quote from Larry Wingett when he was asked like, what is a personal brand? And he says personal brand is finding your uniqueness and exploiting it in the service of others. And I love this idea of the personal brand. Like you are the owner in many cases of the med spas or the aesthetic clinic. And for the majority now, this isn't always the case, but for 99% of the MED spa and aesthetic clinic owners we work with, the owner is formally a practitioner. She might even still be some sort of technician practitioner working inside of the clinic. Originally a clinician, Pennsylvania esthetician who decided to go out on her own and build a business, which is obviously a completely different skillset than being the primary technician in your business as well too. And so most of the clients we work with also have clinical expertise in their area. We do work with a smaller handful of folks who aren't originally providers. If you Will. And so when you think about your personal brand, I like to think about it like you're a conductor in an orchestra. Even as you grow your business and potentially grow to more locations, and certainly as you grow your team, you are still a critical part of the image of your business. And it can be beneficial for many of you to decide, depending on what your goals are. And we're gonna talk about this today so that you can decide, is it worth it to to really double down on my personal brand? And for many of you it will be, and for some of you, it may not be. So when you think about the personal brand and you are like the conductor in the orchestra, you are the one that. I love this analogy because first, even when you think about a conductor, you think about the fact that the conductor has to turn his or her back to the crowd. So when you're the conductor, you actually have to look away from what everybody else is doing and zone in and focus on what your unique genius and what you are doing. And then as the conductor, you lead the orchestra, you design the music, you make sure the tempo of everybody on your team is going a certain way. And you were also the face of the orchestra in many circumstances. So we're going to dive into developing a personal brand today and also uncover the benefits because there's so many benefits to having a personal brand should you decide that you are going to double down on your personal brand in 2025 and beyond. So before we even dive into that, there's basically two bucket marketing into two different camps. You have on one side organic brand building marketing that's on one side. This is everything from your organic social media. It might even be your SEO and what have you. It's building the reputation for your business and for yourself organically in your market. And then the other bucket is what we call direct response marketing. This marketing is less directly tied to your brand. Now, having a brand is incredibly valuable and important as well too. But let's say I decided that I'm going to open up a med spa here in Scottsdale and I'm starting from scratch. That organic brand building marketing is something that I would still invest a lot of time in to, but it's not going to give me the immediate results that I am looking for. And so the other bucket is incredibly important too, direct response. And what I mean by that is that you can put out offers. It could be through meta ads, Instagram, Facebook ads, Google Ads, and actually get new patients or clients to your business quickly with direct response. It's less tied to the brand itself, more tied to the offers that you have. And so I get asked a lot about, you know, should I do Facebook and Instagram ads or how much time and energy should I invest in social media? And you know, today specifically, we're going to be talking about your personal brand as well too. And the answer I have for that is that a very solid strategy is to have both. Okay. I like to think of the organic brand building strategy as the farmer strategy. Right? We're going to plant seeds and we are going to till the land and it's going to take time for those seeds to eventually produce plants and crops and fruit and food and blossoms or whatever we're planting. So those are the farmer strategies. And then I like to think of direct response as the hunter strategies. Like we're going to go out and find food today because we're hungry and we want to eat today. Okay. The direct response marketing actually is less tied to the brand. Now here's the deal. When you marry both of those two buckets of marketing, the hunter and the farmer, the organic personal brand potentially and just organic brand for your med spa or aesthetic clinic directly, when you marry that and you have a strong direct response strategy as well, it's like money channeling my entourage, right? My swingers movie. You're so money, baby. If you can do both, okay? And it's because when we run direct response, any kind of paid advertising that you do, if you have a really strong brand to back it up, you will have such a higher return on investment to any of the direct response stuff that you do. But the organic brand building, there's a cap to doing that, meaning there's so many people you can reach in a small amount of time or even in a long amount of time through organic. So if you use those both together, you will get the best results. So I just wanted to kind of define those two things. So I like to think about personal brand being like your regular marketing and your business's image reputation that it has separate from you is like the engine to your car. And having a personal brand is like having high octane fuel. It just can really separate you from everybody else because of what we are seeing personality infused brands are able to do. Nobody can copy you when you're worrying about the competition. The more I can put you out there as the face, the aesthetic authority for your business, the more you don't even have to think about differentiation and positioning yourself differently because you naturally are a category of one. We talked recently about on an episode about becoming a category of one and having a personal brand, you as the face of the brand is a natural way to actually differentiate yourself as well too. So let's talk about what are some of the benefits of growing your personal brand. Now, for some of you, you may automatically already know that that isn't for you, meaning you are not interested in being the face of the business. And if that's the case, you can still have a really successful business. But in most cases, we still have to have personalities who are providers likely who currently work at your med spa or aesthetic clinic that we will want to incorporate in that organic marketing bucket as well. And even in some of the marketing that we do with direct response. If you were to look at any of my ads, which if you listen to this podcast, you probably feel like you see me all the time, that I'm following you around the Internet everywhere. Because if you engage on any of my content, whether it's hitting my website, whether it's following me on Instagram, or even watching a video on Instagram, then you will get dropped into what we call my warm audience. Meta sees you as somebody who is a warm audience as opposed to cold traffic. Because any sort of engagement, meaning whether it's landing on my website, it's watching a video, it's landing on any of my landing pages that triggers to meta that you are somebody who's of more interest. And so you will see my ads following you around. I've been talking to my ads team about a lot lately is and in fact today we're recording podcast today live, but we're also gonna be recording video ads today as well. And I find that my direct response advertising does the best whether I like it or not. Sometimes with my face to camera videos, I think that makes sense, right, because they get to know me a little bit through video in a way that a static image doesn't. So regardless of whether or not you decide that it is, yes, I want to double down on my personal brand. There is benefits to you having personalities at your practice or clinic that are willing to be part of the face of your clinic or med spa because it actually makes all of the marketing mediums, whether Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, paid ads, your website, what have you, whatever the medium is, we know that personality driven creates connection faster. It creates resonance faster as well too. So even in my direct response advertising, tying in my personality, we see a much higher return on ad spend than if it's just the offer. Now there are some advertising offers that crush it on social media that aren't really personality driven, meaning they just the offer is so damn compelling that the offer stands on its own. The offer is so irresistible that it converts even without the human personal brand touch to it. So. But when we look at your organic brand building, you will still want to have some sort of personalities. I recommend it just because of how much more effective personal content is to your organic or the more direct response paid advertising that you're doing. So what are some of the benefits of growing? We've already alluded to some of them, but some of the benefits to really doubling down on your personal brand, this is for those of you who know you want to step up and be an authority. You want to be a leader in the space. You might have dreams of speaking, of coaching, of teaching, of selling courses at some point as well too, as becoming a very well known trainer in our industry. When you have a personal brand, it makes doing all of those things much easier. So some of the other benefits is you can charge more for your services. I've used this example before. I use it again. When you think about Gordon Ramsay, Gordon Ramsay has his business. He has Hell's Kitchen. So like the, the restaurant Hell's Kitchen. Then he has the show Hell's Kitchen. And then he has Gordon Ramsay, the personal brand. And Gordon Ramsay, the personal brand is incredibly important to his other brands as well too. And recently, like six months ago, we went to Las Vegas for a softball tournament. I think I've been to Vegas like three or four. It's actually four times in the last 12 months for soccer or softball tournaments. And my daughters love the show Hell's Kitchen. They love Gordon Ramsay. And so when we go to Vegas, they want to go to Hell's Kitchen. And so we go to Vegas, Hell's Kitchen for our nice dinner. And we don't expect, even when we go to Hell's Kitchen that Gordon Ramsay is going to be making our food. So when you develop a very strong personal brand, people want to go to your business, even if you're not the one delivering the services for them as well too. So it doesn't mean, I think there's this misnomer that if you become the big personality behind your clinic or med spa, that people are only gonna want to come and see you. And it's not true. Okay. Of course people would love, I would love it if Gordon Ramsay would cook our food for us. But I also really love the fact that he has signature dishes that he designed and he created the concepts around. And that I know, because his personal brand is so great that he attract really top talent chefs and sous chefs and servers and what have you that want to come and work for the Hell's Kitchen empire, if you will, because it's even more than just the restaurant. So he's able to charge more. And when you develop a really strong personal brand, you are able to charge more as well too. You're able to attract really top talent. Sarah Blakely and Spanx. It's another brand where you think about somebody who has really tied their personal story to their brand. And it's really incredible when you think about it, because her personal story doesn't have that much to do with me wearing Spanx underneath my garment so that things look smoother. But she has integrated her personal brand so effectively with Spanx that you know, she is synonymous with that company as well too. And it's become an iconic part of the brand and they're able to attract top talent. People follow her, people follow Spanx. And it's a great example of how you can have a really strong brand for your main business. Like Spanx has a very strong brand separate from Sara Blakely. And then Sara Blakely has a kick butt personal brand as well too. One of the other benefits of really developing a personal brand is if you want to sell your knowledge to your patients, to actually have courses on anti aging and glowing skin and all of those, or sell your knowledge to peers in order to really become. To do what I do as an example, to sell courses, maybe sell coaching, which is very viable for very many of you. You will need a personal brand in order to do that effectively. Because we want to learn and know who the teachers are that we're learning from. And so you can scale your business right, because you're going to attract more talent. Gordon Ramsay's able to attract top talent partially because of his personal brand and the brand of Hell's Kitchen. In the same way, if you grow your personal brand, you will actually attract top talent. And then you'll also be able to position yourself as the top dog in your specialty and you will have the opportunity to sell your knowledge. You can charge for premium coaching and training, in person training. You can have events, masterminds, all of these. It's another vertical that you could be scaling your business. Yes, you can scale your business by actually growing your team, growing your locations. That's one way to scale. But for some of my clients, they know they want to have one really kick butt location and they want to grow the training side of Things they want to grow, the selling their knowledge side of things, the coaching, the training, the potentially selling courses, the speaking opportunities as well too. The other thing that having the personal brand does is it automatically positions you differently like we were talking about. It positions you differently and then it positions your offers differently as well too. And so ultimately this makes it so people are willing to drive further for you because they trust, because you have a personal brand that has built more know like and trust that you have a unique point of view in a way that is sometimes harder for just a brand that is just a faceless brand. And if you even look at some of the big consumer product brands, they try to find personalities. If you look at state farmers or you look at the Gekko for Geico, the reason they're doing that is they're actually trying to find personalities in order to make their brands more personable. Because it's so much more effective to drawing people in to want to work with you as well too. We are drawn to personalities. Another brand that has done this really well is Peloton, that Robin Arzon. I'm not sure I'm saying her last name correctly, but I don't even have a peloton, but I know who she, because you can go and actually bike ride and take her spin classes and she's become like infamous. Peloton has done a great job. So for those of you who maybe don't want to be the face of your brand personally, but you want to really step up some of your providers to be personalities, Peloton is a great example of how this has been done effectively. They found different trainers, spin instructors that are running their classes who have created incredible personal brands on their own. And then people wanna sign up to be a part of Peloton's app or what have you, because they want to be able to work out with these personalities as well too. And you see this with a lot of different skincare companies and you see even brands now really wanting to align themselves with with influencers, whether it's big time influencers or micro influencers. And the reason why is because it's connecting their brand to a personality that already has built, know, like and trust. One of the best ways for you to do it is to just become your own influencer in your market as well too. And what's interesting is you can actually more easily first start with just becoming a person of influence, building your personal brand in your local market first because it's easier to focus in on a certain area. For example, it's actually easier. It's not that hard to actually pitch yourself to maybe be on a local TV show or to pitch yourself to a local publication and to be the expert for something like that. And then to take those local publications and use them to maybe get to a broader audience if it makes sense for you as well too. So what are some effective strategies for actually really building a personal brand? Well, if you follow this podcast, a lot of the strategies we already talk about are going to make it even more easy for you to create a personal brand. So some of the things that we know work for personal brands is having. Having a unique genius. So deciding what can you do more easily? What do you and your team do more easily than anybody else? What is it that you have become infamous for with your current patients and clients? What problems do you solve more effortlessly than maybe your competitors do? What unique point of view do you have? What unique philosophies do you have? What are the beliefs that you have that you share all the time with patients and clients and team members when you're training them that are completely unique to you? Okay, what are those things? And then how can you consistently start sharing those on your organic marketing? And this can even play a role in your direct response marketing as well too. But we're not gonna go down that rabbit hole. Cause I could spend a whole five episodes just talking about direct response. And we're not gonna do that today. Cause that's not the goal in today's episode. So really tapping in. Because here's the thing, whatever you think is like common knowledge in the industry or is common knowledge amongst your peers, it's why I don't love when you guys follow a bunch of your peers and spend a lot of time consuming content from your peers because it really causes you to become disassociated from your own unique genius. And you all have a unique genius. You all have a unique point of view. You all do things clinically, differently. And that's what I love about this industry. And what I love about like working with the humans that I get to work within this industry is that I have so many of you. I've worked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands of you at this point. And I can always uncover the uniqueness in every single practice and clinic that I work with. Each of you have a different point of view. Each of you have a different protocol slightly that you use. You have slightly nuanced belief systems. And the nuance is where the gold is. So really trying to uncover what that unique Genius is. And to start sharing it consistently, what I will tell you is your unique genius. Your unique philosophy doesn't get discovered in a vacuum. And what I mean by that is that do not have perfectionist fantasies about, oh, what's my unique genius? Or what are our philosophies? What are the beliefs that help our clients get from point A to point B? And this is an exercise I do with my clients. I call it a patient365. But we basically will take an ideal patient that they work with, and we will uncover where they were when they first came to the provider and then where they wanted to go. Okay, so point A and point B. And then what are all the problems in their words that they are looking to solve and the desired outcomes that they're looking to achieve? And then what if they weren't limiting the scope of their recommendations on any preconceived notions that they have about the human in front of them? What would they actually design as the ultimate way to help them get from point A to point B? Okay, that's your unique process. Okay? Now what beliefs do I have to have and what beliefs do I have to transfer to that patient that's gonna make getting them from point A to point B even easier? Those are your unique beliefs. So coming up with a unique process and unique beliefs is just so impactful, right? So the beliefs that they need to have, they probably need to discover that it's gonna take more than what they thought. They're gonna need a more comprehensive game plan. They're gonna need to come in annually. They're gonna need really great, probably multiple forms of sunblock. You know, we gotta really indoctrinate them with those specific beliefs. Okay, next is you have to decide you're going to be visible in your niche. You cannot have a personal brand and not be visible. I'm so sorry to report this to many of you whose nervous system just lights up on fire when I tell you you need to be more visible. So social video, video in general is beautiful for y'all to double down on in order to really create personal brand for you, the leader. And also if you are gonn personality driven of maybe some of your providers as well, too. Leveraging stories. People connect with stories, not stats. So your story, you know, collecting the stories of your patients and then sharing them, like how you helped this patient, how somebody on your team helped this patient. Leveraging stories, creating signature offers, becoming known for these offers. So when we think about getting the person from point A to point B, putting together protocols into signature offers, signature packages, signature programs, naming them so that you become known for those offers as well too. And then finally really actually starting to teach. Starting to go out and teach and become a leader by sharing your point of view, teaching it to others as well too. This will actually catapult because if you're somebody that trains in the industry that is knowledgeable enough to actually share your point of view, to teach it as well too, that actually is appealing positioning wise to your patients or clients as well too. Like if, if you're good enough to be training it, then you probably are pretty dang good at your specialty. And I'm gonna wanna travel far to come to you as well too. So Collaborating and Thinking so here's the deal. Having a personal brand, there's so many benefits to it that are incredibly impactful. But I also want you to keep in mind that it does take effort. It takes time as well too. So you have to decide, am I going to be the farmer of my personal brand and take the time to really nurture it? And then am I going to infuse my personal brand potentially in more of our direct response advertising as well too, to benefit from using the personality to grow? So when you think about 2025, we're almost to 2025 right now. As you're listening to this or watching this, when you really think about how you can put rocket fuel to your engine, it makes sense for a lot of you to double down on your personal brand in a more serious way than you have in the past. All right, my friend, that is what I have for you this week. I will see you next week. Hey, if you're enjoying this podcast and you're a bouti driven med spa owner who is looking to drive more sales profitably each month without hustling yourself into the ground to do so, then you should consider applying to join us inside of the MedSpa Advantage. It's the only program designed to help you grow your revenue and profits while gaining back more time so that you don't feel scattered and drained while running and growing your business each month. To learn more about whether or not you're a fit for joining us, you can head over to heathertravene.com apply to apply to get on a call with us to learn more. That's heatherturveen.com apply to learn more.