June 9, 2025 • 29 mins
Welcome to another episode of GSR Place, where host B.D. Dalton digs deep into the secrets of growth, marketing, and personal branding for the “lazy overachiever." In today's episode, B.D. is joined by the incredible Stacy Cohen—a seasoned entrepreneur and PR/marketing agency owner from New York with over 25 years of experience.
Introduced by Allison Kluger, Stacy shares her dynamic journey, starting as a 14-year-old home waitress all the way to writing two books on personal branding: “Brand Up” and “Brand Up 2.0.”Together, they dive into the value of building your personal brand early, the importance of authentic self-reflection, and the power of going beyond the average to truly set yourself apart—no matter your field.
Stacy explains her signature Discovery, Development, and Delivery framework for branding, dishes out actionable advice for amplifying your value (without bragging!), and offers real-world stories of branding wins and lessons learned.Listen in for practical strategies, inspiring stories, and Stacy’s Brand Up Challenge—guaranteed to get you thinking differently about how you present yourself to the world. Whether you’re a student, a business owner, or a professional hungry for growth, you’ll walk away with tips you can use right now to strengthen your brand and seize new opportunities.Let’s jump in!
Introduced by Allison Kluger, Stacy shares her dynamic journey, starting as a 14-year-old home waitress all the way to writing two books on personal branding: “Brand Up” and “Brand Up 2.0.”Together, they dive into the value of building your personal brand early, the importance of authentic self-reflection, and the power of going beyond the average to truly set yourself apart—no matter your field.
Stacy explains her signature Discovery, Development, and Delivery framework for branding, dishes out actionable advice for amplifying your value (without bragging!), and offers real-world stories of branding wins and lessons learned.Listen in for practical strategies, inspiring stories, and Stacy’s Brand Up Challenge—guaranteed to get you thinking differently about how you present yourself to the world. Whether you’re a student, a business owner, or a professional hungry for growth, you’ll walk away with tips you can use right now to strengthen your brand and seize new opportunities.Let’s jump in!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Grow, Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bad Dalton, author of the Assisted Purchase, True Gravity and Grow,
Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty five
years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your business
to the next level. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host, Bead with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hey everybody, Beaty Dalton here, Growth, Sell and Retire Podcast.
I'm always bringing you secrets for the lazy overachiever. Today
I am.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Bringing you an interview with an.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Amazing lady, Stacey Cohen, who I was introduced to by
Alison Klueger.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
We're going to talk today about branding. We're going to
talk about marketing, We're going to talk about all sorts
of fun stuff. But Stacy, welcome to the show. Tell
us a little bit about your journey to where you
got to and then we'll go into brand up and
brand up two points no but over to use Dacy.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Sounds great and I love hanging out with lazy overachievers. Really,
thank you for having me on the show. I'm so excited.
So my background, I run a pre marketing agency in
New York for the last twenty five years. And I've
always been interested in personal branding because if you think
(01:24):
of it as a marketer, it's not all that different
to work at a product, a service, or a person.
And I'm sure we'll dig into that in a bit.
And so I had an epiphany. I have two girls,
they're in their twenties. When my older daughter very competitive
(01:44):
high school, I four point two GPA, ten valedictorians a year.
That was my epiphany, and I just said, you really
need to start marketing with yourself young. So that's what
created my little side hustle on you know, on the books,
(02:07):
you know, and first the book for high school students,
and then a follow up which was just released for
Random two point zero for early career professionals.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
That's right good.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
And the one thing that I wanted to add is
I was born an entrepreneur. I started my first business
at age fourteen. And again, I just love building things,
similar to you what we just boke about before. I
just loved like building things, creating and coming up with
(02:43):
solutions to problems. And there's obviously a problem right now,
you know, both college admissions and also the job market
ultra competitive.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, and especially that when when people are hiring and
where we're out there looking for as a business owner,
looking at who's available, what makes them different? How that's
really it's really hard to distinguish when you're just looking
at a resume or a CV to pick that out.
So going back to your what was your fourteen year
(03:15):
old job?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
What did you do my.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Fourteen year old job? My friend Jennifer and I were
tired of the average babysitting rate, so we came up
with an idea on how to make more money. So
lived in started out in Brooklyn. My parents moved to
the suburbs and a lot of the women would have
(03:40):
dinner parties. So my friend Jennifer and I put an
ad in the local Penny Saver, and I still remember
the headline of the ad. It was we set, serve
and clean up. So we basically were home waitresses and
we'd go to these homes for dinner parties. I have
to tell you we were a book solid and there
(04:02):
was no internet then, but it was just word of
mouth would be at the party and all we really invested.
We went to a second hand store at thrift shop.
We got these white nurses uniforms and white shoes, and
we we just took care of everything during the party
(04:23):
so that the host and hostess could enjoy.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So now if we take out, if you take the
same thing back to the brand up, and you went
back and you talked to Stacey at fourteen, what would
be one thing you would have told her in the
we set serve and clean up in today's world, what
would you have said, here's one thing you could have
done to even take it to that next level.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
So what I would have that's I love that question.
What I would have said is, you know, because it
was just Jennifer and myself, like, we could have blown
this up, right, We could have blown this up and
we could have had like a whole crew of other
fourteen fifteen year olds that were babysitting and wanted to
(05:07):
make more money and again more frequent advertising. If I
remember correctly, I think we only advertised once and so
then when we got a couple of jobs, those three jobs,
of course there's amplification, but we could have really blown
up this business because you know what, there was a void,
(05:28):
there was a need, and people didn't want to pay
a crazy amount of money to have help, but they
did want to be able to enjoy the party with
someone that you know, that could help from beginning to end.
So I think it would have been to turn our
and this is what I say about branding all the time.
(05:50):
It's like to turn your visibility, and the visibility would
have been to advertise more right, turn the value, excuse me,
turn the value, which our value was again addressing this
problem of helping people out that we're having these incredible
home parties, but again turning that value into visibility, so
(06:13):
making it more visible and spreading the word. Again, it
would have to have been done more organically, but even
through some local advertising.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
That's awesome. So you did that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So if we kind of come back into today's present
and you're you're helping, you're helping people either set themselves
aside or what's something counterintuitive that you're saying, because that
one was fairly intuitive, is you know, kind of lean
into it, make it go big.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
What's something that you actually.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Tell people maybe to stop doing in their branding or
personal branding, or is something that somebody would say, really, okay, Stacey, whatever,
we'll try that out.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yeah, and it's it's really very foundational and it's the
same exact issue that we have when we first take
on a new client through the agency. It's it's so
easy now, like to just jump to the next shiny
petty right. So it's like, you know, very tactical. Oh,
I should get on TikTok oh, let me do some
(07:14):
Instagram reels. No, it starts with you. And that's not
something that's well understood. And it's not even just high
school students early career professionals. I think it's really all
of us. You know, you've got to do the inner
work first. You know, it's quite easy again, jump into
(07:35):
the tactics, you know, put a new headshot on your
LinkedIn profile, make sure your cover letters are really cleaned up.
But personal branding is really about the marketing of you,
So you really need to be strategic and intentional about it.
And it really starts with a self audit, right, And
(07:58):
I always say, you know, you need to be able
to answer the million dollar question in order to get
to the top of the decision maker's list. And depending
on a person's goals, the decision maker may be very different,
you know, Like for me as a business owner, I
(08:18):
want to attract more clients. Someone in an early career
professional they want to either advance in their profession or
they're seeking a new job. An entrepreneur maybe looking to
get more investors, and so on and so forth. But again,
you need to be able to answer the million dollar
(08:39):
question why choose you? So this is about defining your value.
So again this is what I call it's you know,
have a three step framework discovery, development, and delivery. This
is the first step, which is discovery where you get
clarity about what your super power power is and again
(09:03):
what your value is to others. Because BT, you and
I both know, like there's a lot of misconceptions about
personal branding and a lot of people are very turned
off with the word itself. And so I always say,
it's not a narcissistic thing. So it's not like me, me, me,
It's like what is your value to others? And again
(09:26):
you really need to crystallize it. And a lot of
people when I say, well, tell me what your superpower is,
they have no idea.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
And that's that's crazy, I mean, because you should know
that because everybody else is just selling the commodity. So
if you can't unwrap your non commoditized personal a vive
or whatever you want to call it, then nobody else
is going to be able to do it so exactly,
So what's the so what's the question? So if I'm
(09:55):
doing this, if I'm looking at myself and I want
to deal with this, how do I introspectively?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
What questions do I ask myself.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
About that going down that journey?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Is what makes me different? That's that's a huge question.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Yeah, yes, where do you need to be very self
reflective and you want to ask yourself questions? Uh, you
know about like, you know, what do I want to
be known for? What are my biggest achievements? And and
again really it comes down to what is your superpower? What?
(10:35):
And also what are you passionate about? Right? Because there
has to be you know, a match. So again it's
it's passions, it's it's experience, its achievements and its values.
And it's again it's very This is why I think
a lot of people skip over it. By and large,
I don't think most of us are very self aware.
(10:58):
And for my first book, I interviewed a self awareness expert.
And when you are self aware, self aware and achievement
and success are all connected. So again, the more self
aware we are, the greater likelihood for success.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
So where does in this?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And Americans are different than Brits in a lot in
a lot of sense, it's very self deprecating, is and
this is very stereotypical. But I deal with a lot
of business owners people, a lot of the people where
we're seeing as being bullshey. We're you know, putting ourselves
out there as Americans. So if you're trying to look
(11:43):
at your brand and promote yourself, but you've still got
this British mindset, how do I do it without feeling
like I'm bragging about myself?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
That's that's a great question. Again. I think it's about
and I get this question, you know from Americans also,
this isn't about like if you could just turn it
around and think about it, this is not about self promotion, right,
This is really about value. And I have a mantra
(12:17):
and it's add value, not clutter. So I feel that
every person, whether whether brit or French or American, we
all are subject matter experts in something. So lean into that, right,
So lean into it, get out great content that will
(12:37):
again position you. You could call it as a thought
leader or subject matter expert, and again, constantly figure out
ways that you can add value to the community. And look,
it's like everyone means if they're putting content out. I
always say, you need a content diversification strategy. You don't
want to put content out like, oh, today I won
(12:58):
this award and and last week I won that award
Like that is not doesn't make someone likable. Unlikable is,
by the way, a big part of personal branding. But
so you want to diversify your content, and you want
to also show you humanside I'm a big believer in
(13:19):
showing vulnerability. None of us are perfect. Show who you
really are. And but I understand what you're saying about
self promotion, and I think it's difficult to you know,
to get over that hump. But again, if you can
find ways that you can add value to your target audience,
it will be a lot easier.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So when you're doing that, I think I've seen it,
and I mean you probably do it somewhere in the
brand or the overall breakdown is you know when somebody
buys from somebody else or goes somewhere else, and you go,
if they would have just come to me, they had
gotten this, this, and this, But people don't put that
(14:02):
in their branding. They don't put that in there until
it's too late, you know, And how do you So
if we lead into that and look at it from
an authenticity point of view, is you're in this because
you believe you're better than at least some of the
people in your market.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
So how do you do that? I mean, I think
over to you, I guess, sorry, yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
You know, that's a great question, and it's really not. Again,
it's not that different from marketing a product or service,
right because part of this discovery process that I just
mentioned is that you want to understand the needs of
your target audience. What are what are their pain points?
What can you give them that they need? But at
(14:45):
the same time, you also want to look at your
competitors and see how they're positioning themselves. You know, how
can you put your you know, can you put yourself
out there? Put your stick in the ground in a
different way. So, again, a lot of this is to
(15:06):
get the answers. It's doing research and only when you
again go through the self reflective exercises and then you
also look at your target audience and also your competitors.
And I also forgot to tell you because there's another
important ingredient in the mix. It's like we all have
(15:27):
blinders on. It's really important to also see how your peers,
your family, business colleague, how do they perceive of you?
And when you have all of that information aggregated, that's
when you can really crystallize your value and then make
sure that you you know as you're developing your assets,
(15:52):
which is the second stage, that you're really clear on
what your value is, that you have message and you
know and again every every touch point, every touch point, so.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
You have talked about that.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
You you literally just said the blinders effect is whenever
I talk to business owners or when we when we
listen to this stuff and you and I chat with them,
and you probably get the same thing as they believe
that they already know what their client wants versus or
the end user. Or what I say is brand is
what people say about you when you're not in the room.
(16:27):
Is we believe that that's what they say, but we
don't know. So we get lost in this belief and
we lose sometimes half of the picture of our value.
Add So, how how can we unplug ourselves to get
into this either three sixty view or get the business
owner or the person that believes it removed. How do
(16:48):
how do you suggest people when with your clients, how
do we suggest you think that they think this about you,
but here's what they really think about you in the
nicest way, you.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Know what it's It's that's such a great question, because
like if we were doing an assessment of of of
a client and going through that discovery process with them,
we would insist on speaking to some of their stakeholders
and that could be it could be board members, it
(17:20):
could be clients, and always making it anonymous and you know,
and they're really surprised. I have to tell you, they're
really surprised about what they hear. And it's typically like
I didn't know, you know, I didn't know that. It's
a little bit more challenging as a person. But the
(17:41):
one thing I hear time and time again is that
a lot of people, you know, when when they're when
they're developing their brand and then putting it out there,
when they start hearing like, oh, I didn't know that
that you know you that you do that that you
can consult on this again, that's the type of thing
(18:04):
you want to hear. You don't want to just hear
the good. You want to hear the good, bad, and ugly.
So the closer you can get to pure honesty and
people you know, and maybe there's a way like to
do it anonymously. But there's also I tell people that
(18:25):
there's some people that aren't coomfortable, like asking people like
what's your perception to me? Like when I walk out
of the room, like what are you saying about me?
There are some great personality tests that you know, you
can take that can also give you more clarity.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
That's really good. Okay, so we've discovered develop what's the
third one again?
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Okay, So it's it's discover yep, and it's it's developed.
The develop stage is really packaging your assets, so to speak.
So it can be anything from from your LinkedIn to
your cover letter to you know, I encourage some people,
depending on on you know, their industry, to develop their
own website. And then it's the delivery stage, where again
(19:13):
we're turning that value that we that we now know
about ourselves into visibility. So we become our own news
channel and we figure out how to disseminate the information
and and really get it out there to a target audience.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
That's really good.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
So if you've had you've had lots of successes, and
you'll probably seen some not so successful or failures or
whatever we want to call them. What are some do's
and don'ts when we're looking at at things that people
could look at when they're doing their branding and going
through the stages and everything else.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And if you give us.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
A good one, and you don't have to give us
the name of the company or whatever it is, but
kind of what area they're in, and then what the
success was or and then one the use really stands
out as a we worked.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
On all this and then they didn't do this ends.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
And is this is this for an individual or for
a company?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
I am fine either way.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
I think a way for company or individual because I
think a lot of it, Like you said, personal brand,
service brands, product brands, it's all the same, so.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Good success. So challenge.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Yeah. So you know, again out of out of all
of this is and I have I have like tens
ten dues and don't and you know, if you want,
I can always send you a link to them. But again,
to me, the most important part of all this is
you've got to be the exception. You can't be the average, right,
(20:51):
So whether it's a person, product or service, you want
to be a one out of one hundred. You do
not want to be in a pack of ninety nine.
So this is a typical example and I've seen it
several times. So we work with a lot of professional
service firms, and you'll understand this when we work with
a financial firm. And believe me, I know that there's
(21:13):
a lot of compliance issues. I had a short stint
at a bank. I have my Series seven sixty three,
so I understand compliance. But the thing is is that
if you're not willing to again be different, stand out,
(21:33):
it's like all the best branding in the world, it's
not going to help move the needle. So I do
find that there's some resistance, and I also think it's
it's partly with some people or companies that it could
be a little bit of a confidence level. Again, it's like, well,
(21:56):
we're doing okay, we don't we don't want any negativity
because we're doing something different, and you know, and I
had that. I'm going to another example. I did that
with a We also do a lot of healthcare with
a dental client, and we were running pretty racy ads,
(22:22):
like at least in you know, in that industry and
even and this is going back years ago, but dentists
weren't even running print ads, and some of them were racy,
and it was on cosmetics and you know, like teeth
whitening and that type of thing. And she had another
dentist call her and say, how could you do this
(22:43):
to the dental industry. You're putting our name in mud.
And so she called me and unbelievable, like close friend,
she was formerly my dentist and you know, went to
Catholic school and so she was she was freaking out,
(23:03):
and she said, I don't know, I think we should
just pull all the ads. And I just said, let
me ask you something. Are the ads working? And she
said yes, from just you know, from just one ad,
you know, I got like a ten thousand dollars of
an aircase. And so I couldn't make her decision. But again,
(23:26):
sometimes just challenging things and doing things differently, there are
going to be naysayers, and so I think you just
have to get comfortable with that. And again this is
this is not about being someone else. It's about being authentic.
It's about being real, it's about being human, it's about
being vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
And you said it's that that value add the takeaway
and don't don't create clutter. So what with some of
your clients, how do you get them to put that
into a message that says so, like for financial advice,
it's I take away you having to call this and
do this and store up all these files and do
(24:06):
all this stuff and I make it just one sheet
and one amount of money that hits your bank account
every month or so? How do we do that when
it's something that's ethereal in a service versus a product,
Because a product you can take such and feel. So
how do I get that proper thing that I do
the value add the clutter takeaway for a service because
(24:30):
like you said, for dentistry, you can see it in
your teeth. But how do you do that when you
have a bank, or you have a law firm or
an accountancy firm.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Yeah, and so with that because for example, we work
with a law firm and we've actually worked with them
for twelve years and every client is different, right, Yeah,
we do pure and they actually do elder law, and
you know, yeah, we get you know, we get out
news releases, we handle their LinkedIn channel. I think what
(25:01):
has really set them apart is we get them out
there speaking. We get them out there speaking to centers
of influence. So rather than you know, getting that one
by one client, which their direct client would be like
a caregiver, you know, like a family, like a caregiver
who's trying to get their parents papers in order, we
(25:26):
get them out speaking. I would say that we probably
get them about twenty five to thirty speaking gigs and
different lawyers and they all have different expertises. Get them
out there speaking to industry conferences and again thinking about
their referral sources, right, so with attorneys their referral sources
(25:46):
or for them financial planners, wealth advisors, it could be.
We also get them to speak to you know, assisted
living facilities. We're also getting them in front of accountants
and et cetera. And again it's you know, it has
(26:07):
to be customized. And also they're very comfortable doing this.
But as you can imagine what happened during COVID, all
of these speaking engagements and a lot of them were alive,
Like the marketing plan went out the window. So with
them and it was. It was different because most law
firms probably wouldn't be comfortable with this, but we just
(26:28):
started to stream a lot of webinars like Facebook lives
and that type of thing.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
I get it.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Really it got people's attention because it's like, wow, you know,
like a law firm on on you know, on like
a life Facebook stream. And as a matter of fact,
there was definitely resistance. But the best, the best acknowledger
and I ever got is that the lead attorney said, Wow,
(26:57):
this is this is really helping us move the needle
in such a difficult time. And when we come back
from COVID, I have an extra office that I want
to make into a podcast studio and even do more
of this.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Very cool, very very cool. So here it is, so
we get to kind of the end of it. So
what's the brand up challenge?
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Okay? The brand up challenge? Okay, again, we're going to
stay more in the basic foundational because I you know,
a lot of the tactical stuff won't work. I want
listeners to write down four words to describe themselves and
ask four people that they trust and will give them honest,
(27:50):
authentic feedback to describe them in four words and So
here's the thing. There's probably going to be a mismatch,
but that's not a bad thing. Like I said before,
we all have blinders on, so this is really showing
perception and reality are not in sync. But b D,
(28:10):
it's this gap where the magic happens. And you know
at this point, this is where you can really refine,
realign and and start building your brand that that reflects
you who you are and how you show up in
the world.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
So where can people find out more about you and
see where the book is and all that type of stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So where's the best place to go? I'll put in
the show notes, but where's the so much.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
I appreciate it. So website, uh, brand uplife dot com.
Follow me on Instagram at Stacy ross Cohen.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Good.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Yeah, this is this has been a pleasure. I feel
like we could even have a part too.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Yeah two point zero so the brand, Yes, this is perfect.
So Stacy, thank you very much for coming on the Gross,
Sell and Retire podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
It's been a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Thanks for joining us on Grow, sell and Retire For
more information tools or to book one of our team members.
To work with your team business, or to speak at
your event or conference. Visit rockfind dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of Bad's
three books. The Assistant Purchase True Gravity and the Book.
The podcast is based on, Grow, sell, and retire. If
(29:38):
you want to work for the rest of your life,
that is your business. If you don't, that is ours.
Grow, Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bad Dalton, author of the Assisted Purchase, True Gravity and Grow,
Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty five
years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your business
to the next level. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host, Bead with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hey everybody, Beaty Dalton here, Growth, Sell and Retire Podcast.
I'm always bringing you secrets for the lazy overachiever. Today
I am.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Bringing you an interview with an.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Amazing lady, Stacey Cohen, who I was introduced to by
Alison Klueger.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
We're going to talk today about branding. We're going to
talk about marketing, We're going to talk about all sorts
of fun stuff. But Stacy, welcome to the show. Tell
us a little bit about your journey to where you
got to and then we'll go into brand up and
brand up two points no but over to use Dacy.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Sounds great and I love hanging out with lazy overachievers. Really,
thank you for having me on the show. I'm so excited.
So my background, I run a pre marketing agency in
New York for the last twenty five years. And I've
always been interested in personal branding because if you think
(01:24):
of it as a marketer, it's not all that different
to work at a product, a service, or a person.
And I'm sure we'll dig into that in a bit.
And so I had an epiphany. I have two girls,
they're in their twenties. When my older daughter very competitive
(01:44):
high school, I four point two GPA, ten valedictorians a year.
That was my epiphany, and I just said, you really
need to start marketing with yourself young. So that's what
created my little side hustle on you know, on the books,
(02:07):
you know, and first the book for high school students,
and then a follow up which was just released for
Random two point zero for early career professionals.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
That's right good.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
And the one thing that I wanted to add is
I was born an entrepreneur. I started my first business
at age fourteen. And again, I just love building things,
similar to you what we just boke about before. I
just loved like building things, creating and coming up with
(02:43):
solutions to problems. And there's obviously a problem right now,
you know, both college admissions and also the job market
ultra competitive.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, and especially that when when people are hiring and
where we're out there looking for as a business owner,
looking at who's available, what makes them different? How that's
really it's really hard to distinguish when you're just looking
at a resume or a CV to pick that out.
So going back to your what was your fourteen year
(03:15):
old job?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
What did you do my.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Fourteen year old job? My friend Jennifer and I were
tired of the average babysitting rate, so we came up
with an idea on how to make more money. So
lived in started out in Brooklyn. My parents moved to
the suburbs and a lot of the women would have
(03:40):
dinner parties. So my friend Jennifer and I put an
ad in the local Penny Saver, and I still remember
the headline of the ad. It was we set, serve
and clean up. So we basically were home waitresses and
we'd go to these homes for dinner parties. I have
to tell you we were a book solid and there
(04:02):
was no internet then, but it was just word of
mouth would be at the party and all we really invested.
We went to a second hand store at thrift shop.
We got these white nurses uniforms and white shoes, and
we we just took care of everything during the party
(04:23):
so that the host and hostess could enjoy.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So now if we take out, if you take the
same thing back to the brand up, and you went
back and you talked to Stacey at fourteen, what would
be one thing you would have told her in the
we set serve and clean up in today's world, what
would you have said, here's one thing you could have
done to even take it to that next level.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
So what I would have that's I love that question.
What I would have said is, you know, because it
was just Jennifer and myself, like, we could have blown
this up, right, We could have blown this up and
we could have had like a whole crew of other
fourteen fifteen year olds that were babysitting and wanted to
(05:07):
make more money and again more frequent advertising. If I
remember correctly, I think we only advertised once and so
then when we got a couple of jobs, those three jobs,
of course there's amplification, but we could have really blown
up this business because you know what, there was a void,
(05:28):
there was a need, and people didn't want to pay
a crazy amount of money to have help, but they
did want to be able to enjoy the party with
someone that you know, that could help from beginning to end.
So I think it would have been to turn our
and this is what I say about branding all the time.
(05:50):
It's like to turn your visibility, and the visibility would
have been to advertise more right, turn the value, excuse me,
turn the value, which our value was again addressing this
problem of helping people out that we're having these incredible
home parties, but again turning that value into visibility, so
(06:13):
making it more visible and spreading the word. Again, it
would have to have been done more organically, but even
through some local advertising.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
That's awesome. So you did that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So if we kind of come back into today's present
and you're you're helping, you're helping people either set themselves
aside or what's something counterintuitive that you're saying, because that
one was fairly intuitive, is you know, kind of lean
into it, make it go big.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
What's something that you actually.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Tell people maybe to stop doing in their branding or
personal branding, or is something that somebody would say, really, okay, Stacey, whatever,
we'll try that out.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yeah, and it's it's really very foundational and it's the
same exact issue that we have when we first take
on a new client through the agency. It's it's so
easy now, like to just jump to the next shiny
petty right. So it's like, you know, very tactical. Oh,
I should get on TikTok oh, let me do some
(07:14):
Instagram reels. No, it starts with you. And that's not
something that's well understood. And it's not even just high
school students early career professionals. I think it's really all
of us. You know, you've got to do the inner
work first. You know, it's quite easy again, jump into
(07:35):
the tactics, you know, put a new headshot on your
LinkedIn profile, make sure your cover letters are really cleaned up.
But personal branding is really about the marketing of you,
So you really need to be strategic and intentional about it.
And it really starts with a self audit, right, And
(07:58):
I always say, you know, you need to be able
to answer the million dollar question in order to get
to the top of the decision maker's list. And depending
on a person's goals, the decision maker may be very different,
you know, Like for me as a business owner, I
(08:18):
want to attract more clients. Someone in an early career
professional they want to either advance in their profession or
they're seeking a new job. An entrepreneur maybe looking to
get more investors, and so on and so forth. But again,
you need to be able to answer the million dollar
(08:39):
question why choose you? So this is about defining your value.
So again this is what I call it's you know,
have a three step framework discovery, development, and delivery. This
is the first step, which is discovery where you get
clarity about what your super power power is and again
(09:03):
what your value is to others. Because BT, you and
I both know, like there's a lot of misconceptions about
personal branding and a lot of people are very turned
off with the word itself. And so I always say,
it's not a narcissistic thing. So it's not like me, me, me,
It's like what is your value to others? And again
(09:26):
you really need to crystallize it. And a lot of
people when I say, well, tell me what your superpower is,
they have no idea.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
And that's that's crazy, I mean, because you should know
that because everybody else is just selling the commodity. So
if you can't unwrap your non commoditized personal a vive
or whatever you want to call it, then nobody else
is going to be able to do it so exactly,
So what's the so what's the question? So if I'm
(09:55):
doing this, if I'm looking at myself and I want
to deal with this, how do I introspectively?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
What questions do I ask myself.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
About that going down that journey?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Is what makes me different? That's that's a huge question.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Yeah, yes, where do you need to be very self
reflective and you want to ask yourself questions? Uh, you
know about like, you know, what do I want to
be known for? What are my biggest achievements? And and
again really it comes down to what is your superpower? What?
(10:35):
And also what are you passionate about? Right? Because there
has to be you know, a match. So again it's
it's passions, it's it's experience, its achievements and its values.
And it's again it's very This is why I think
a lot of people skip over it. By and large,
I don't think most of us are very self aware.
(10:58):
And for my first book, I interviewed a self awareness expert.
And when you are self aware, self aware and achievement
and success are all connected. So again, the more self
aware we are, the greater likelihood for success.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
So where does in this?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And Americans are different than Brits in a lot in
a lot of sense, it's very self deprecating, is and
this is very stereotypical. But I deal with a lot
of business owners people, a lot of the people where
we're seeing as being bullshey. We're you know, putting ourselves
out there as Americans. So if you're trying to look
(11:43):
at your brand and promote yourself, but you've still got
this British mindset, how do I do it without feeling
like I'm bragging about myself?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
That's that's a great question. Again. I think it's about
and I get this question, you know from Americans also,
this isn't about like if you could just turn it
around and think about it, this is not about self promotion, right,
This is really about value. And I have a mantra
(12:17):
and it's add value, not clutter. So I feel that
every person, whether whether brit or French or American, we
all are subject matter experts in something. So lean into that, right,
So lean into it, get out great content that will
(12:37):
again position you. You could call it as a thought
leader or subject matter expert, and again, constantly figure out
ways that you can add value to the community. And look,
it's like everyone means if they're putting content out. I
always say, you need a content diversification strategy. You don't
want to put content out like, oh, today I won
(12:58):
this award and and last week I won that award
Like that is not doesn't make someone likable. Unlikable is,
by the way, a big part of personal branding. But
so you want to diversify your content, and you want
to also show you humanside I'm a big believer in
(13:19):
showing vulnerability. None of us are perfect. Show who you
really are. And but I understand what you're saying about
self promotion, and I think it's difficult to you know,
to get over that hump. But again, if you can
find ways that you can add value to your target audience,
it will be a lot easier.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So when you're doing that, I think I've seen it,
and I mean you probably do it somewhere in the
brand or the overall breakdown is you know when somebody
buys from somebody else or goes somewhere else, and you go,
if they would have just come to me, they had
gotten this, this, and this, But people don't put that
(14:02):
in their branding. They don't put that in there until
it's too late, you know, And how do you So
if we lead into that and look at it from
an authenticity point of view, is you're in this because
you believe you're better than at least some of the
people in your market.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
So how do you do that? I mean, I think
over to you, I guess, sorry, yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
You know, that's a great question, and it's really not. Again,
it's not that different from marketing a product or service,
right because part of this discovery process that I just
mentioned is that you want to understand the needs of
your target audience. What are what are their pain points?
What can you give them that they need? But at
(14:45):
the same time, you also want to look at your
competitors and see how they're positioning themselves. You know, how
can you put your you know, can you put yourself
out there? Put your stick in the ground in a
different way. So, again, a lot of this is to
(15:06):
get the answers. It's doing research and only when you
again go through the self reflective exercises and then you
also look at your target audience and also your competitors.
And I also forgot to tell you because there's another
important ingredient in the mix. It's like we all have
(15:27):
blinders on. It's really important to also see how your peers,
your family, business colleague, how do they perceive of you?
And when you have all of that information aggregated, that's
when you can really crystallize your value and then make
sure that you you know as you're developing your assets,
(15:52):
which is the second stage, that you're really clear on
what your value is, that you have message and you
know and again every every touch point, every touch point, so.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
You have talked about that.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
You you literally just said the blinders effect is whenever
I talk to business owners or when we when we
listen to this stuff and you and I chat with them,
and you probably get the same thing as they believe
that they already know what their client wants versus or
the end user. Or what I say is brand is
what people say about you when you're not in the room.
(16:27):
Is we believe that that's what they say, but we
don't know. So we get lost in this belief and
we lose sometimes half of the picture of our value.
Add So, how how can we unplug ourselves to get
into this either three sixty view or get the business
owner or the person that believes it removed. How do
(16:48):
how do you suggest people when with your clients, how
do we suggest you think that they think this about you,
but here's what they really think about you in the
nicest way, you.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Know what it's It's that's such a great question, because
like if we were doing an assessment of of of
a client and going through that discovery process with them,
we would insist on speaking to some of their stakeholders
and that could be it could be board members, it
(17:20):
could be clients, and always making it anonymous and you know,
and they're really surprised. I have to tell you, they're
really surprised about what they hear. And it's typically like
I didn't know, you know, I didn't know that. It's
a little bit more challenging as a person. But the
(17:41):
one thing I hear time and time again is that
a lot of people, you know, when when they're when
they're developing their brand and then putting it out there,
when they start hearing like, oh, I didn't know that
that you know you that you do that that you
can consult on this again, that's the type of thing
(18:04):
you want to hear. You don't want to just hear
the good. You want to hear the good, bad, and ugly.
So the closer you can get to pure honesty and
people you know, and maybe there's a way like to
do it anonymously. But there's also I tell people that
(18:25):
there's some people that aren't coomfortable, like asking people like
what's your perception to me? Like when I walk out
of the room, like what are you saying about me?
There are some great personality tests that you know, you
can take that can also give you more clarity.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
That's really good. Okay, so we've discovered develop what's the
third one again?
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Okay, So it's it's discover yep, and it's it's developed.
The develop stage is really packaging your assets, so to speak.
So it can be anything from from your LinkedIn to
your cover letter to you know, I encourage some people,
depending on on you know, their industry, to develop their
own website. And then it's the delivery stage, where again
(19:13):
we're turning that value that we that we now know
about ourselves into visibility. So we become our own news
channel and we figure out how to disseminate the information
and and really get it out there to a target audience.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
That's really good.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
So if you've had you've had lots of successes, and
you'll probably seen some not so successful or failures or
whatever we want to call them. What are some do's
and don'ts when we're looking at at things that people
could look at when they're doing their branding and going
through the stages and everything else.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And if you give us.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
A good one, and you don't have to give us
the name of the company or whatever it is, but
kind of what area they're in, and then what the
success was or and then one the use really stands
out as a we worked.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
On all this and then they didn't do this ends.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
And is this is this for an individual or for
a company?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
I am fine either way.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
I think a way for company or individual because I
think a lot of it, Like you said, personal brand,
service brands, product brands, it's all the same, so.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Good success. So challenge.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Yeah. So you know, again out of out of all
of this is and I have I have like tens
ten dues and don't and you know, if you want,
I can always send you a link to them. But again,
to me, the most important part of all this is
you've got to be the exception. You can't be the average, right,
(20:51):
So whether it's a person, product or service, you want
to be a one out of one hundred. You do
not want to be in a pack of ninety nine.
So this is a typical example and I've seen it
several times. So we work with a lot of professional
service firms, and you'll understand this when we work with
a financial firm. And believe me, I know that there's
(21:13):
a lot of compliance issues. I had a short stint
at a bank. I have my Series seven sixty three,
so I understand compliance. But the thing is is that
if you're not willing to again be different, stand out,
(21:33):
it's like all the best branding in the world, it's
not going to help move the needle. So I do
find that there's some resistance, and I also think it's
it's partly with some people or companies that it could
be a little bit of a confidence level. Again, it's like, well,
(21:56):
we're doing okay, we don't we don't want any negativity
because we're doing something different, and you know, and I
had that. I'm going to another example. I did that
with a We also do a lot of healthcare with
a dental client, and we were running pretty racy ads,
(22:22):
like at least in you know, in that industry and
even and this is going back years ago, but dentists
weren't even running print ads, and some of them were racy,
and it was on cosmetics and you know, like teeth
whitening and that type of thing. And she had another
dentist call her and say, how could you do this
(22:43):
to the dental industry. You're putting our name in mud.
And so she called me and unbelievable, like close friend,
she was formerly my dentist and you know, went to
Catholic school and so she was she was freaking out,
(23:03):
and she said, I don't know, I think we should
just pull all the ads. And I just said, let
me ask you something. Are the ads working? And she
said yes, from just you know, from just one ad,
you know, I got like a ten thousand dollars of
an aircase. And so I couldn't make her decision. But again,
(23:26):
sometimes just challenging things and doing things differently, there are
going to be naysayers, and so I think you just
have to get comfortable with that. And again this is
this is not about being someone else. It's about being authentic.
It's about being real, it's about being human, it's about
being vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
And you said it's that that value add the takeaway
and don't don't create clutter. So what with some of
your clients, how do you get them to put that
into a message that says so, like for financial advice,
it's I take away you having to call this and
do this and store up all these files and do
(24:06):
all this stuff and I make it just one sheet
and one amount of money that hits your bank account
every month or so? How do we do that when
it's something that's ethereal in a service versus a product,
Because a product you can take such and feel. So
how do I get that proper thing that I do
the value add the clutter takeaway for a service because
(24:30):
like you said, for dentistry, you can see it in
your teeth. But how do you do that when you
have a bank, or you have a law firm or
an accountancy firm.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Yeah, and so with that because for example, we work
with a law firm and we've actually worked with them
for twelve years and every client is different, right, Yeah,
we do pure and they actually do elder law, and
you know, yeah, we get you know, we get out
news releases, we handle their LinkedIn channel. I think what
(25:01):
has really set them apart is we get them out
there speaking. We get them out there speaking to centers
of influence. So rather than you know, getting that one
by one client, which their direct client would be like
a caregiver, you know, like a family, like a caregiver
who's trying to get their parents papers in order, we
(25:26):
get them out speaking. I would say that we probably
get them about twenty five to thirty speaking gigs and
different lawyers and they all have different expertises. Get them
out there speaking to industry conferences and again thinking about
their referral sources, right, so with attorneys their referral sources
(25:46):
or for them financial planners, wealth advisors, it could be.
We also get them to speak to you know, assisted
living facilities. We're also getting them in front of accountants
and et cetera. And again it's you know, it has
(26:07):
to be customized. And also they're very comfortable doing this.
But as you can imagine what happened during COVID, all
of these speaking engagements and a lot of them were alive,
Like the marketing plan went out the window. So with
them and it was. It was different because most law
firms probably wouldn't be comfortable with this, but we just
(26:28):
started to stream a lot of webinars like Facebook lives
and that type of thing.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
I get it.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Really it got people's attention because it's like, wow, you know,
like a law firm on on you know, on like
a life Facebook stream. And as a matter of fact,
there was definitely resistance. But the best, the best acknowledger
and I ever got is that the lead attorney said, Wow,
(26:57):
this is this is really helping us move the needle
in such a difficult time. And when we come back
from COVID, I have an extra office that I want
to make into a podcast studio and even do more
of this.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Very cool, very very cool. So here it is, so
we get to kind of the end of it. So
what's the brand up challenge?
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Okay? The brand up challenge? Okay, again, we're going to
stay more in the basic foundational because I you know,
a lot of the tactical stuff won't work. I want
listeners to write down four words to describe themselves and
ask four people that they trust and will give them honest,
(27:50):
authentic feedback to describe them in four words and So
here's the thing. There's probably going to be a mismatch,
but that's not a bad thing. Like I said before,
we all have blinders on, so this is really showing
perception and reality are not in sync. But b D,
(28:10):
it's this gap where the magic happens. And you know
at this point, this is where you can really refine,
realign and and start building your brand that that reflects
you who you are and how you show up in
the world.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
So where can people find out more about you and
see where the book is and all that type of stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So where's the best place to go? I'll put in
the show notes, but where's the so much.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
I appreciate it. So website, uh, brand uplife dot com.
Follow me on Instagram at Stacy ross Cohen.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Good.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Yeah, this is this has been a pleasure. I feel
like we could even have a part too.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Yeah two point zero so the brand, Yes, this is perfect.
So Stacy, thank you very much for coming on the Gross,
Sell and Retire podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
It's been a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Thanks for joining us on Grow, sell and Retire For
more information tools or to book one of our team members.
To work with your team business, or to speak at
your event or conference. Visit rockfind dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of Bad's
three books. The Assistant Purchase True Gravity and the Book.
The podcast is based on, Grow, sell, and retire. If
(29:38):
you want to work for the rest of your life,
that is your business. If you don't, that is ours.
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.