Jason Vana

Blake: [00:00:00] All right. On the podcast today, I have Jason Vanna, who we're going to talk about branding and side hustles and how you can actually create content that leads to gigs. But before we get into that, let's get a little bit of context on Jason. So first off, Jason, how are you doing today?

[00:00:20] Jason: [00:00:20] I'm great, man. How are you doing?

[00:00:22] Blake: [00:00:22] I am fantastic. I'm ready to get this going. And I'm curious if we could just get a little bit of the history

[00:00:28] Jason: [00:00:28] of your career so far, just so we

[00:00:29] Blake: [00:00:29] know, where are you being and how you can help out?

[00:00:33] Jason: [00:00:33] Yeah, so I actually started out in sales doing, advertising sales for a local newspaper. and I like to tease all my, salespeople friends that I upgraded to marketing after that.

[00:00:45]they don't like that so much, but I like to say it. but yeah, so I've been in marketing for roughly about 13 years, if you don't count the five years, where I focused on advertising. And so basically done everything from designing ads to helping small local businesses, no how to market it. their company.

[00:01:06] Two, I'm marketing for a community college marketing for a church marketing for now. A food processing equipment, the manufacturer. and then I have my own side hustle where I help, personal brands. And. More small businesses really understand their branding and, developing marketing strategy. So basically I break the rule of find a niche and focus on it because I've done, I've basically done it all.

[00:01:37] So yeah, that's, that's kind of a, my career in a nutshell, I would say.

[00:01:43] Blake: [00:01:43] And if you had to pinpoint like one professional superpower that you feel like you encapsulate, what would that be?

[00:01:50] Jason: [00:01:50] Oh man. I would say the biggest thing, and this is why a lot of people will, will hire me, is the, the ability to really help, A business helping individual understands their identity as a, as a brand or as a company. and be able then to communicate that quickly and communicate that well. and so really what I've done at the current job where I work. Is taking a brand that no one knew in the industry and turned it into a globally recognized, Globally recognized and really desired brand, to work with. And so that's kind of the, I can do a lot, but that's my super power is, here's the messaging. Here's what we need to focus on. Now let's do this. So yeah, that's, that I would say is my super power. And

[00:02:40] Blake: [00:02:40] that. So that's, that's on a bigger scale.

[00:02:42] And then, and if we take it down, I'm sure that we have a lot of principles that we can cover for side hustlers and people that are trying to do something, build something that's meaningful to them, but they're kind of starting from scratch. So let's, let's just dive into that, because if I'm early on in my side project, I kind of know my, I know my product, I know my audience a little bit.

[00:03:02] How early on should I actually be worried about branding?

[00:03:06] Jason: [00:03:06] So actually a lot of my side hustle, my personal side, hustle cuts clients are personal branding and kind of that very small business. I have an idea, I have a product and I want to move forward. And really what I, I advise them is, you really need to start working on your brand right away.

[00:03:25] And the reason I say that is. A brand is not just a logo and colors and fonts and all that. Those are brand elements. But really what a brand is, is understanding your identity as whether that's an individual or a company. so it's your identity and how you communicate that and get people to understand that very quickly.

[00:03:48] So psychologists say that we have seven seconds. To make a first impression that within seven seconds you will make a judgment on any person, product, idea, company, whatever it may be, seven seconds. And what a brand does is it takes the core of who you are, who your businesses, and distills it down in a way that people can make that snap judgment.

[00:04:12]within seven seconds correct about who you are. And so I'm not saying that you need to go all out and spend $5,000, having someone you know, come up with a fancy brand for you and, and go through like a weeks long process of a brand. I would definitely say later on, as your brand grows, you might want to do that to make sure everything is in sync.

[00:04:35] But really you need to, I tell my clients this all the time. Nope. The process you need to go through with marketing is start with your, your target customer, your target client. Who are the people that you want to buy your product, buy your service, work with you. Then the next thing you need to do is determined who you are as a company or brand or a personal side, hustle or whatever, whatever you are in that, in that category.

[00:05:07]You need to determine who you are and what your message is. What is that? What I tell my clients, you need the tagline, which is your three to six word. Here's who I am in a snapshot, and then your one line summary of this is who I work with. This is what I provide. These are the results you're going to get in one sentence.

[00:05:29] That way people see that and they are able to very quickly understand how you benefits. Yeah. And that really is your, that's your brilliant. it's not necessarily the logo and the colors that comes later where you, once you know who you are and how you help your target audience, then you pick colors and you pick fonts and all that stuff that helps with, yeah.

[00:05:53] Persona that you've built around yourself and around your company. So for me, I always tell people, start right away. You. It takes some time. And I know as a side hustler and or a small business, that's the last thing you have is time. Especially when it's like I have to start making sales so I can pay some bills.

[00:06:15] Like I know that I go that process. Bye. The benefit of having a brand and people being able to see the content you put out, see, you know what you're doing, look at you and be able to very quickly say that's who you are and that's how you help. That's, that's invaluable. Like you, you will land more clients, you will get more money if you have a brand and people can very quickly see if you can help them or not.

[00:06:45]it's, you'll even save money on marketing if you have a good brand. So it's, it's really a core thing that you need to do right away.

[00:06:55] Blake: [00:06:55] You mentioned that a tagline, so I wanted to nitpick at that a little bit because. I'm curious if you have any examples, whether of your

[00:07:03] Jason: [00:07:03] own brand or a brand that you've worked with,

[00:07:06] Blake: [00:07:06] a tagline or two, just to give people an idea of what that actually, it sounds like it looks like.

[00:07:11] Jason: [00:07:11] Yeah, so my tagline for, for shift is, simplify your marketing, because that's really when, as I put out content, as I've worked with customers, you know, throughout the last, Doing a side hustle now, probably for 15 years off and on just helping random local businesses with their marketing. Well, what I've heard is that, from kind of from this target market of.

[00:07:36] Personal brands and small businesses is when they think of marketing, they think this very overwhelming, like I don't even understand where to start because now there's this thing called tick tock, and I should be on Snapchat, but I don't even know what that is. And how do I do Instagram? And you know, I heard someone say, I need to have a website, but I don't even know how to build one.

[00:07:56] And like it's, it's all this marketing advice that's out there. And there the, a lot of. Personal brands and small businesses are just overwhelmed and like, I don't know where to start. And what I've heard people say is, you can't, I've come in and help them simplify the whole process. And so I took what is my, unique, my USP, my competitive advantage, whatever you want to call it.

[00:08:20] I've taken that. Why clients, work with me and distilled it into three words. I'm working with a. A client right now, it's an it company. And what we've settled on for them is, making it simple. really, when you look at it written out, it also says, making it simple, you know, cause it, and it is the same thing basically.

[00:08:43] And. Yeah, I don't, okay. I don't make every tagline have the word simple in it. Right. Well, as I was saying that, I was like, Oh crap. People are gonna think that all I do is come up with simple. but really what they've said when, when they've worked with their clients and as we've done surveys with their clients and understand like why people hire them is they have this, you really unique, this is what they call a decision matrix.

[00:09:08] Which helps their customers understand what actually they need in the it world for their company. So they sit down and they say, okay, what do you want your phone system to do? Like, do you want to pick it up and be able to push a button and transfer? Do you want to be able to record? Do you want to be able to do this?

[00:09:25] And when it looks, when you look at your, the computer system, do you, what do you need it to be able to do? So they help them answer those kinds of questions. And then what they do is develop a And it system for ...