Gary Ware on Building Something Uniquely You

By Kim Hanna

Welcome back to Let's Talk About Brand! This week's guest is Gary Ware of Breakthrough Play, which facilitates personal and professional breakthroughs through the power of play. As adults, we often forget how to do that; Gary rediscovered the power of play himself through comedic improv training, and figured out how to apply that to something new. 

Marketing is a creative application when you think about it. Gary very brilliantly made that twist from a marketing career into creating Breakthrough Play, where he works with corporations and teams and groups to rediscover the power of play to enhance their creativity, productivity, and facilitate team building.

How Breakthrough Play came to be 

Gary knew that he didn't want to do something that he didn't like. He explored web design, graphic design, and attended the Art Institute in Los Angeles. He also grew an interest in marketing, so he started a digital marketing agency. As a manager, he felt a little in over his head. 

When a friend suggested he try an improv class, Gary wasn’t very into the idea at first. But he tried it out and loved it. 

“It changed my life. For two hours I was completely present. I was playing these silly games with, like, 15 other people that I didn't even know and we connected. And I immediately saw the connection between those games and what I was learning to prepare me, to be able to think on my feet on the stage to be able to connect with other people.”

Fast forward a few years later, Gary connected the power of play with his experience in marketing to develop Breakthrough Play. 

What is the power of play?

Breakthrough Play provides a very unique service. Since that service is so unconventional, Gary sometimes encounters hesitance when proposing this idea to companies. Gary says, “the biggest thing that I get is 'oh, play? We got a lot going on, it's a global pandemic. We don't have time to play.'” 

Gary explains the importance of play and why businesses should incorporate it into the workplace. Breakthrough play is perfect for companies that are looking for unique and novel ways to help their employees improve in several ways. 

Gary points out that every year, LinkedIn releases a ranking of the top skills that employees need to be successful. Those attributes generally include creativity, the ability to be adaptable, and communication. All of those things are attributes that Breakthrough Play brings to companies. 

Not everyone is immediately on board. Gary says, “Through my training, in applied improvisation and communication training, I developed this curriculum that allows people to slowly edge into it. And that's the beauty with play. If you think about when you were a kid, and you would play, you would forget about time. You would feel so present with whatever is going on. And then by the end of it, you're like, 'I want more!' And so that is what I'm super excited to bring to companies.”

Unlocking your creativity

Gary talks about a study done by NASA where they followed a cohort from kindergarten through high school. They put them through a series of tests that were used to measure their level of creativity. And they found that 95% of those kindergarteners had genius levels of creativity. However, by the time they were 18, only 3% of that group had genius levels of creativity. What happened?

Gary goes on to explain that as children grow up, they’ll develop insecurities as they start to compare themselves to others. Gary says, “You’ll see someone that has an innate talent. And you're like, 'Well, they're good at that. I'm not. So I'm not creative.'”

Anyone can learn to be creative again through the power of play. Gary says, “Think about when you're playing a game, like a video game. You just play just for the sake of playing. But when you run into a challenge, whatever you're doing, whatever game that you're playing, you don't just throw in the towel. You get adaptive. You start to get creative, and so it's a muscle that you can cultivate.”

Gary advises people to set aside time every day and work out your brain. He calls it ‘going to the gym for your brain.’ Gary mentioned an exercise called Droodles to work out your brain. A Droodle is an abstract image that you look at and interpret however you want. The point is to work out your brain by thinking creatively. 

What’s so great about Droodle and other brain games? Gary says, “You have to allow yourself to be silly. You have to allow yourself to think about whatever you want, and that takes practice. So if you wanna get creative, it's all about being intentional. Plus, you're doing it in a low stakes environment, your brain.”

Find Gary

Where can you find Gary Ware? You can find him as @GaryWare on social media, or check out his website, breakthroughplay.com. He loves chatting with people, especially if you're interested in creativity and curiosity.

Thank you so much to Gary Ware of Breakthrough Play! Tune in next Friday at 12 noon Eastern on Facebook Live for the next episode of Let’s Talk About Brand. In addition to this Friday Livestream, you can also check out Let’s Chat About Brand, the Tuesday Twitter chat that’s on the same topic as the Friday Livestream. See you next week!

Ryan Foland on Branding with Authenticity

By Kim Hanna

Welcome back to Let's Talk About Brand! Today’s guest Ryan Foland is all about ditching the act, keeping it real, and bringing his whole self to the table rather than playing some sort of part of what he should be, because what he should be is himself. 

He’s the perfect person to talk with us today about this week’s topic, branding with authenticity.

Being known as authentic

Since Ryan is known as the authenticity guy, we asked him how that came to be. How did he have that moment where he realized this is his niche?

Ryan’s answer: “I was sick of trying to flip flop between what I was thinking I should be doing.” This was when he ditched the act.

For example, Ryan wanted to be a speaker. He tried to emulate what other speakers were doing, write blogs and tell others what he wanted to do. He soon realized he needed to do more than that. 

He continues, “I had this moment I was like, You know what? I'm just so sick of having to rebrand myself. I was the guy who was running the entrepreneurship center at UCI. If I'm gonna get fired, I'm gonna have to come up with what I am next...and I realized at that moment that I need to build a brand that is who I am.”

How to Build an Authentic Brand

What happens if you’re not being authentic? Why is it important to be authentic? Check out what Ryan had to say on this.

“When I tried to build a brand that wasn't truly authentic, I sort of erased everything up until what I was now. And I think a lot of us do that where, when we build our bio or we're trying to take on a new profession, or even in this pandemic, we're trying to rebrand because whatever we did before maybe didn't work.”

“Sometimes we downplay or erase everything that's happened in the past and just get people to focus on what I'm doing now. But the problem with that is that you lose all of that experience that you can share. And I truly think that building an authentic brand is highlighting your experience and letting somebody else decide that you have expertise as opposed to just telling people you have expertise.”

“It’s a process, I sort of owned my whole story where I talk about not just the good shiny parts. I talked about how I was at a point to file bankruptcy and I actually mailed it in, and it got returned to me because I didn't have enough stamps on it. And for me, that was a change in my life.”

Why does he share those low points? He says, “It's about not trying to build a brand on your highlight reel. It's about trying to build a brand on your highlight REAL. And it gives you the opportunity to sort of be imperfect and to connect with people where they might find common ground.”

In summation, Ryan explains that we all have a lot to share. And you can talk about more than just the shiny parts, even though it’s not always easy. Ryan says he was fearful about sharing his bankruptcy, but now it’s something he’s proud of as it’s changed the way he looks at the world and who he is a person. As per the name of Ryan’s book, it’s okay to ditch the act!

How to discover your personal brand

Ryan has a process called the Rapid Reflection Discovery process. This is a way to discover how people currently perceive your brand. We have control over the content that we create, so a personal brand is the intersection between what people know about you and what you want to be known for. 

How do you duplicate this as an experiment? 

• Ask your friends, family, coworkers, or followers to give you words and phrases that come to mind when they think about you. It's best if this is done anonymously. Have somebody collect the answers. 

• Then, gather that data but don't look at it yet. Take post-it notes on your own and decide all the things that you want to be known for. Think about in an ideal world, what do you want to be known for?

• Next, look at these pieces of data. Ryan likes to put them up on a wall. 

• Then, group the post-it notes into groups. The outliers you get rid of, and you will have chunks of post-it notes that have a theme to it. The challenge is to pick three of those clusters. This is how you start. 

Now, you have three things to start your personal brand on. Maybe it’s something professional, something personal and something that you do as a hobby. 

Ryan says, “This process allows you to start with this common ground, and then you have the chance to evolve your content to then create digital breadcrumbs. People evolve to see you on your journey, so that that's where I hope people start.”

Find Ryan Foland

You can find Ryan at ryan.online. That’s it! There you can find his podcast, his four TEDx talks, and how to work with him. Also, check out his book, Ditch The Act!

Thank you so much to Ryan Foland for ditching the act, keeping it real and being here with us today to help all of us do the same. Make sure to tune into the live show, Let’s Talk About Brand, every Friday at 12 noon eastern on Facebook. See you there!

Ashley Graham on Branding With Media

By Kim Hanna

Welcome back to Let's Talk About Brand! Today we are talking with Ashley Graham, aka Your Brandista. Ashley is a publicist and empowerment coach who works with conscious brands to elevate their influence through aligned media strategies.

Ashley empowers brands to be able to get their message out there in the places and ways that they want. But not all exposure is equal. Today, Ashley is going to talk about aligned media strategies that make sense for yourself and your brand. 

What does PR mean to you?

From a traditional standpoint, we’ll define PR as shaping the public's perception of a business, brand, or entity. However, there’s more to public relations than just that definition. Ashley emphasizes the differences between personal branding and business branding. 

“A brand is more of building an emotional connection with your clientele or your audiences. And so when it comes to public relations or media relations, such as taking video, for instance, it's getting a person or two people who are very intertwined in the personal branding side and getting the audience to make an emotional connection with them. A personal brand is really making an emotional connection with the people who you are engaging with.” 

When you consistently engage with your audiences and connections, you can start to build more of an emotional connection with them through personal branding.

What is the advantage of building an emotional connection? 

There is an advantage to being a thought leader and being an expert. But the emotional connection element is really where the good stuff is! Why is it so important to generate that emotional element as a personal brand? 

Ashley responds, “Emotion comes down to trust. When you have an emotional connection with somebody, there's already that trust factor where you know you trust and confide in them to be able to share your story or share messages that are wearing on your heart.”

 In conjunction with trust, it comes down to familiarity. When you're emotionally connected to somebody you feel that you've known them forever. There's just more of that personal dynamic there. 

How can that personal brand obtain that emotional element through media? Ashley says the possibilities are endless. “You can reach targets or audiences that you probably wouldn't normally meet. For example, going live on video allows you to influence and distribute your message to the masses.”

With traditional networking, or just going out and socializing, you're limited in the capacity to make that emotional connection. Media is global, so the reach is way more significant. 

Is building relationships more important than trying to push your brand to people?

You also want to think about building better relationships with people, whether that's your clients, your influences, or your audiences. 

Ashley says, “We have to treat our media influences—our bloggers, our influencers, our editors, our writers—with the same integrity that we would treat our clients because they're the ones that are using their brainpower and their creativity to take a story angle and pick it up and then leverage their influence with the outlets that they are found within.” 

How can having a strong personal brand presence on social media help with getting media exposure (and the other way around)?

Ashley says that it's like the infinity symbol: one feels the other and then back again. “Social media is PR. And there's so much value that you can get out of just leveraging your personal brand on social media.”

Because anyone can share and retweets wherever content is being circulated, it can even be picked up on larger media platforms. “Recently a good friend of mine, Mariah, did a Tik Tok that ended up going viral, and it was picked up by BET.”

If you are consistent on social media and you keep showing up and producing good content, that has that impact factor of not just posting to post, and that's where the opportunity to go viral or the opportunity to get those pieces picked up on other platforms happens. 

What's your advice to those trying to break into the PR industry?

Ashley says, “if you could just familiarize yourself with one element of media relations or PR, it's where social media comes into play as a huge factor to that.”

Familiarize yourself with the types of content that people are putting out there, the conversations that they're having, and find mentors that are either in the publicity space or just content creators.

Content creators and influencers are also publicists. They know how to pitch themselves to brand and how to work out various agreements. If you are on social media, you’re already doing your own PR, you may just not be thinking about it that way. 

Find Ashley

Ashley can be found on all platforms as Your Brandista. She’s very active on Instagram, and she’s also growing her Facebook Group, The Conscious PR Community. This group focuses on what it means to live consciously when it comes down to the media's perception. This group is for anyone interested in PR, social media, marketing, and entrepreneurship!

Thank you so much to Ashley Graham of Your Brandista for talking to us today about personal branding and publicity! Make sure to tune in to our live show every single Friday at noon eastern as well as our Tuesdays Twitter chat at noon eastern!

Julie Cottineau on Building Your Unique Brand

BY KIM HANNA

This week we’re talking about building your own unique brand with Julie Cottineau of BrandTwist, a brand consultancy that helps entrepreneurs and corporations build stronger and more profitable brands.

Julie is also the creator of Brand School by BrandTwist, an online master class that helps small business owners and entrepreneurs develop more focused and distinctive brands. 

Julie was previously the VP of brands at Virgin, and before that, she held executive positions at Interbrand and Grey Worldwide. She's also the author of the incredible book, Twist: How Fresh Perspectives Build Breakthrough Brands.

What is “brand” at its most basic level?

Before diving into the topic of branding, we asked Julie how she defines brand. She says, “a brand is a story...and that story should have who you want to talk to. You want to tell the story too. What conflict are you overcoming? And then, importantly, what's your twist? Great books, movies, every kind of story, podcast that we listen to, they always have something different, something unique, and a Twist.” 

...and that is why her book is titled Twist. A twist is your unique point of difference. How do you stand out? When thinking about your own brand, think about what makes it unique. 

Others may define brand as how people would describe you, or maybe your reputation. What does brand mean to you?

Personal brands vs corporate brands

Julie has worked extensively with both personal and corporate brands. And they actually have a lot in common! The biggest similarity is that at the end of the day, both personal and corporate brands have a story that they want to tell. 

The main difference, however, is how people approach them. While corporate brands always seem to have a plan with clear goals and accomplishments, personal brands are looked at based on personality. Julie explains that a personal brand is not just your personality, but a more curated version of your personality.  

“You probably don't put up the pictures where you look your absolute worst or where you're doing absolutely nothing for the weekend, right? You tend to put pictures on social media and comments that help people understand what you're about and present yourself in the light that you want to be presented in.” 

Julie emphasizes that whether it is a personal brand or a corporate brand, keep company values at the core of everything.

Social media & personal brands

Since personal brands are based on your personality, social media platforms have been life-changing for personal brands around the world. For those starting out, you can simply create an Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn account for free.

 “It's made us all professional branders with free tools at our fingertips,” says Julie.

This might sound easy at first, but the challenging part is to remain consistent because most people engage in more than one channel. Think about your own brand for a second. Does it have the same look and feel on LinkedIn as it does on Instagram? Do viewers get the same message? 

Brand consistency

What are some things that people should keep in mind when they're defining their personal brand in terms of making sure that they're able to show up consistently?

To maintain a consistent overall look and feel of your brand, Julie’s biggest tip is to “own a color!” The color that Julie uses is purple. But she makes it meaningful. “Purple is a twist of red and blue. My business and my approach to branding is about looking at different things from different places and twisting them together.” Julie stays consistent with her brand by incorporating purple into her book, website, and even clothing. 

What color do you think of when you look at Christine Gritmon, Inc? Hopefully, you think red!

Another way to stay consistent is with a consistent tone of voice. “We defined our tone of voice and we made sure that whether we were writing a piece of copy or we were hiring somebody to do it, they had tone of voice guidelines,” said Julie. Figure out your tone of voice and then set guidelines in place for yourself and other people that might be helping you such as a ghostwriter or social media person.

Finding your “Twist”

With Julie being the author of Twist, we had to ask her, “how do you find your twist? Here’s her answer:

• Start looking outside of your category to brands that you admire and you learn from them. 

• Pay attention to the storytelling of people that you admire and then twist those lessons into your own brand. 

• Try new things. Julie spends one day a week where she does something she’s never done before. She calls it Twisting Tuesdays. That might be taking her dog to a new park or watching a documentary and Netflix on a subject she knows little about. Making time in her calendar to experience something new helps her stay inspired. 

Work with Julie

Julie is the creator of Brand School, an online master class that is great for solopreneurs, nonprofits, or just anybody who feels like their brand is getting a little bit stale and wants to learn! It’s an eight-week program starting on October 8th, 2020, on Thursdays from 12:30 to 2:00 Eastern time.

Brand School will help you figure out who to target, your brand promise, and how to raise your prices when you get clear on your story. This semester, Brand School will focus on COVID and the specific challenges of how to market and how to be sensitive during these times. You’ll go through an interview process where you'll get a 30 minute Brand Booster session where you get immediate feedback on your brand. To get started, email julie@brandtwist or go to brandtwist.com and click on Brand Booster session. 

Thank you so much to Julie Cottineau of Brand Twist for her incredible insight on building your unique brand! To watch our Let’s Talk About Brand show, join us live on Facebook every Friday at 12 pm.