Hi, I'm Dani Tan and if you are here, you are in the right place. Today we are talking about building a brand. So whether it's building a brand for your personal brands, for your business, we're talking all about it. If we have not met yet before we dive in. I'm Dani Tan. I'm a speaker and leadership coach. I'm here for you. If you are an aspiring leader, an executive, an entrepreneur, all the above, and you are looking to grow, you are the kind of person who's like, I'm always just trying to learn something. I don't know what, I don't know. I want to expand what it is that I have. Knowledge wise, growth wise, capacity wise, you are either building out or a part of a high performing team. And last but not least, you are preparing for your next pivot or promotion.

So maybe it is that you are looking to pivot within your company, outside of your company, go into entrepreneurship, do both, or you're looking for that next step to promote yourself, then that is who I am and who I help. If you don't know about me, I used to be a former VP. I pivoted careers five times. I worked in merchandising, E commerce, sales, PR, you name it all, achieving 11 promotions in 11 years. And so I also juggled both entrepreneurship and corporate and then jumped right into entrepreneurship full time not that long ago because I just absolutely love searching, serving my clients and helping them hit their goals and make them happen. And so that's why I do what I do. I think there sometimes is a lot of mind drama about making a change for yourself or making a change in your career.

And we kind of stop ourselves before we start when we are going to pivot. And I think, nope, we can make it happen and we can make it much more achievable and safe feeling. And that's why I'm here to do it, because you are allowed to evolve. So let's talk about personal brands. I am talking about this topic because the thing that's pretty interesting is that you know when you are creating visibility for yourself, whether it's in a corporate space, entrepreneurial space for your brand, and especially in like the world of creators, where there are so many creators out there, which is amazing because of the Internet, a lot of folks will ask the questions of okay, well where do I even start when it comes to making a personal brand?

So maybe you're an executive and you are trying to get into a circuit where you're speaking on stages and you want to Understand, okay, like, what should be my speaking topics? What should be my personal brand? What should I be posting on LinkedIn? I have one client who they made the jump to being CEO of their company before, you know, yeah, they've been leadership positions, but not something so forward facing. And so they were like, okay, like I really need to start to understand, like, what is it I'm going to be speaking to and creating more visibility for myself and for my company. Right. Another thing that another client that had come to me was, hey, you know, I have been really seniored in my role for some time now and I really haven't been owning my leadership skills.

I've really been owning who it is that I am. I just go around like, you know, leading these organizations, these nonprofits, doing this volunteer work, but I'm not really like taking ownership in what is that I do and why I do it. And so again, looking and exploring for a personal brand or for a business. So not understanding, okay, what is our company known for? What should our clients know us for? And being able to help figure out what that looks like. So the first thing that I always start with is understanding what is your vision? So what is your overall vision? So if you're an individual for yourself and you're trying to create a brand for yourself in your speaker circuit, or create a brand for yourself as a creator for your personal brand, or create a brand for your organization, what is your vision overall of what it is?

So what is the mission of the, of the why of what you do that what you do? And what do you value? What is of importance to you? Because I think that we jump to the end result of, okay, I know what I want the results to be of me having a personal brand. I maybe insert, you want community, maybe insert you want to have media coverage, maybe insert, you want to be able to start a nonprofit, whatever it may be, that's okay, but bring it back to like the mission. Mission and the values of. Are you trying to embody and effect change? Are you trying to shed light on a topic that maybe hasn't been shed? Are you trying to give a group or population of people a voice that maybe haven't been heard? And start there first of what your core mission is for your brand?

Because all the other stuff is going to be super hard to nail down if you don't really have what it is that your core mission is for your personal brand and what it is now can this change and evolve? Yes, of course. We're always going to leave room for you to continually evolve because we're human beings, we're people, we will always evolve, too. But it's good to have a starting point of what it is that you truly want to have at your core when you're creating this brand. And then what do you value? What is important to you? Right? Not everyone's going to be the same. So some folks are going to come in and they are here for, like, social justice change. Some people are going to be more here for organizational change.

Some people are going to be here in order to really just. They want to build a brand that is going to create wellness for mothers. So being able to think about, like, what are the values that are most important to you? Is it moms? Is it, you know, being able to have equitable leadership within organizations, whatever it may be? And the next thing is when you're creating this brand is like understanding who your audience is. So you can have your mission, you can have your values. But if you don't have the support there from your audience, from the community that you're trying to build, then it's just kind of like you alone with, like, your flag, your mission, and so understanding who is your audience?

So do you have people already around you who are echoing to you what it is that you're known for? Do you have people around you echoing to you things that you say or that you stand for? Who is your audience? Who is it that you want to serve, and what are they saying that their needs are? Where do they feel supported? Where don't they feel supported? And how can you really start to understand where they need support? So I'll give you an example on this one from here. I'll give you an example for me. So could I just say that I want to help folks who are aspiring leaders, executives and entrepreneurs be able to achieve their goals, whether it comes from a growth standpoint, from building out their teams or getting ready for the next pivot, Sure, I can just say that.

But also it's understanding aspiring leaders, executives and entrepreneurs and what it is that they're looking for. So I didn't just, like, throw that out there. I actually spoke to people, and I speak to people all the time who are in those lanes, and I asked them what do they need the most help with. And this is one of them. For example, this is how I come up with my workshop topics. It's there. They want to know about personal brands, they want to understand about how to make change, they want to understand how to hire. And so understanding what they need more support in is where you can start to understand where you can serve and build your brand identity around. And so the next piece that I would say is being able to make an identity or create an identity, support identity, build an identity that helps your audience.

That's what's most important. If you are building a brand or a product or you're building your personal brand, it's about who it is that you are serving. I say this and I used to have this written down, but it is not for you. You're not here to serve yourself, you're here to serve your community, you're here to serve your audience. So it's best to understand who they are. The same thing goes, if you're creating a product, you always have to understand customer. Who is the customer should be very customer focused of what are their pain points, where do they need the most support and how you can be able to deliver that to the best. And then creating a plan. So you want to have a plan and a strategy in place in order to make this a big thing that will scale, right?

So in the sense of are you starting out small? First of you are doing just your vision and your values, then you're going to be doing your audience and your market research essentially on who is out there in the landscape. Then you're going to start creating who that brand identity is. How will you serve them? What will that be? And the last thing is like, okay, now once you started to do that, you're going to start to iterate. So you want to give yourself, you know, different points of when that will happen. So is your ultimate goal with your brand just to create visibility? Is it to create community? Is it to create a product? But these are the things that I want you to think about when it comes to developing a brand and being able to start to clarify it.

And here's the big thing that comes up is that when people first come in to get coached and they ask me questions about their brand or building a brand, they'll say, well, I don't know, what do you think my brand is? Here's the thing, it's not about me looking at you and deciding what your brand is. It's about you looking at yourself and doing the self discovery of what you believe and what you want your brand to be. And then us going to the exercise of okay, what can we do to help support that come to fruition? And that is the real work. Because if you don't believe in what it is that your mission and your values are of what it is that you're trying to do. It doesn't matter what anybody tells you what your brand is.

Right. You have to be able to be bought in, believe and want to take that step forward. But it first starts with a self reflection of what is your mission, what are your values, and then we can take the exercise of looking at it. Yes, I can always give you feedback on what we can tweak and finesse from a strategy standpoint, from a timeline standpoint, to rolling out and scaling it. But the thing that's most important is for you to have that base point for yourself. And so what I do with you is so you can go from kind of like questioning and like looking to everyone else for an answer is to help you feel more settled and embodied in what it is that you want to do, to feel really confident, to feel empowered in what your brand is.

Because I will give you like a little like, okay, listen, we gotta shake it off. Because if you are always looking to others of what it is that you should be, it's not gonna resonate for people because they're gonna be able to see that you are just trying to, I'm gonna use this term, people, please, or fit into other people's molds of what you should be. In reality, it's about who you are serving, who you are becoming, who it is that you want to embody. And that is where I'm here, is to help you build that confidence, for you to feel inspired, for you to feel empowered, to really stand into what it is that your brand is. And we take it through the exercise too, of understanding your audience, of understanding having a plan strategically in order to actually implement, to have a plan to iterate on your brain of the things that you want to work on, maybe you want to finesse more, do less of.

And that is the part that's really fun. But yeah, so whether it's a personal brand or a business plan, business brand. Now you have an idea of how we work together on all of those pieces. And so if you're like, okay, so I want to do that with you. I want to build out my brand. I have folks who want to build out wellness brands. I have folks who want to build out apparel brands. I have folks who want to build out personal brands as speakers or as leaders in their space. But the first step, when it comes to working with me, I actually don't recommend booking a call. I recommend that you first get to know me and you listen to the podcast, the Pivot and promotion podcast. Listen to some Episodes.

Get an idea for who I am, who I work with, how I help you. Join my email list, the pivot and promotion email list. Again, get a good idea of who I am, who I help. Just in general, I think it's a good idea to get a good feel for who it is you could potentially be working with before you book a call. Then when you feel like, wow, okay, something is clicking here and I feel like I want to take this next step, then I would say book a call with me. And then on the call what we'll do is I will listen to what it is that you're looking to do. Maybe you've had it on your to do list for a long time of this big step you wanted to take or you've been wanting to take and you've been kind of like delaying it, waiting for that moment.

And you need that support. You want that accountability, you want that, that person to be there, to be like, hey, like, this is the next step. This is how we can work together to make it happen. Then I am totally here for you. That is what I do. My clients, I always say they're very smart, they are very driven, they are very motivated, they are extremely ambitious and they are very good at delivering for everybody else. And so when they come to work with me, it's because they've had something that they've been wanting to do, but it takes them putting themselves before everybody else on the list. And usually they are just taking care of everybody else first. And so I'm usually the one that's here to help make that like that secret goal, that secret plan happen.

And for you to prioritize yourself and to really make it happen is through the accountability of working together. And so I always say, I'm your coach for life. You are not rid of me. After our time working together, I truly want it to be a beautiful experience where you feel like you have learned skills, you have built self belief, you've built confidence, you feel empowered in order to not just take that one goal and make it happen, but to know how to take those skills and to build those pieces for anything that you want to do. And that's what I think is really, really important, is to have that for life. And so you know where to find me. You can go to dannytan D A N I T A n dot com for my podcast, my email list, and how to book a call with me.

So I will talk to you soon.