People connect to personal and professional brands best through the stories they tell. Can you clearly convey who you are, what you do, and why you do it? As Founder and CEO of Mojo UP, Travis Brown helps people communicate this every day.
Travis breaks down not only the importance of knowing your story on a deep level but also how to identify and leverage it. Along the way, he loops in the roles of authenticity and vulnerability play in getting your brand out there. Check it out and learn about Travis’ people-first leadership brand and how he brings it to life through his actions.
Truth You Can Act On
1. Get Clear on the Problem You Solve
When we deal with personal brand clarity or company brand clarity, we stick in this area of determining your brand value. One of the questions that I ask is, ‘What is the number one problem that you solve?’ And what happens a lot of time on strategy sessions is people spend 30 minutes trying to get around to that, and it needs to be so concise, it needs to be put in a way that people can just do it. We always say, ‘One problem our clients face is they’re great at what they do, just not enough people know how great they are at what they do, and we solve that.’ So I’m always like, ‘Hey, what is that problem that you solve in your market?’
2. Always Be Working on Your Story
Your story is definitely 100% an evolving thing, and you may feel comfortable with who you think you are today and how you articulate it, but then you go to market, and you start saying it and doing it, and you realize there are some words that you have to tweak. So we do a brand blueprint where we sit in a conference room for an eight-hour session. At the end of that, people walk away with their story and even their taglines. Then we have them go use it. That means get on your next sales call, go talk to your spouse, talk to your friends, and actually use what we’ve come up with, and then get comfortable.
3. Lean into Vulnerability
Vulnerability is probably an area people miss. They try to compartmentalize their work self, like their husband or wife self, their business self, their church self, and what have you, right? They try to compartmentalize that versus embrace those. All things are a part of you.
They’re all a part of your story, and they’re all what makes you relatable. People are also afraid to disclose their failures. My first speaker coach told me, ‘The more you’re comfortable talking about your failures, the more relatable you are.’ We have this facade of perfection, like I have it all together and I’m perfect because we don’t want people to judge the fact that maybe I’m not all the way there. But the truth is being able to teach from your failures, and being able to be empowered by your failures is a huge part of your story.
Book Recommendation:
- Chop Wood Carry Water by Joshua Medcalf
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
Listen to the full episode: Episode 177: Communicate Your Story with Travis Brown
