Hey you guys, welcome back to the podcast. This is a solo episode and I'm kind of excited. Last week we did my interview with my friend Janessa Taylor who runs Brightly Social with her sister in law. They are awesome. I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed making it with her. And this week we're getting back into, like I said, the solo episode.
And as you know, I've been experimenting with the podcast. I've been coaching clients from the matrix and the miracle mind live and sharing that recording with you. I've done interviews with friends and other creators like me, and I just love hearing your feedback. So if you feel inclined, I'd love to hear what you think about the things that I'm trying because I love creating it, but I also want to do it with you in mind, of course. So I'm excited if you feel inclined to share, please do.
Today we're diving into the self actualization of personal brands and this idea has been on my mind for a long time. If you don't know my story or if you're new to my world, welcome. I studied psychology when I was getting my bachelor's degree. That's like what I have a degree in thinking I was going to become a therapist. And I remember, even then I resonated more with like the positive psychology. I didn't totally resonate with the abnormal psych stuff that I learned, you know, like split personality and all these crazy, like not crazy, cause it happens to real people, but the stuff that I wouldn't encounter in my day to day life. I was always drawn to like the potential of humans and peak performance and like I said, positive psychology.
And one idea immediately struck a chord with me. And that idea is self actualization, which is what we're talking about today. And the person who really drove this point home for me was Abraham Maslow, who's a psychologist. And he described self actualization in his hierarchy of needs framework. And if you're familiar with this, just bear with me, this will be a reminder for you. If you've never heard of him, to give you the short of it, imagine a pyramid. And he basically explains that there's a hierarchy of needs. So at the bottom of the pyramid is physiological and this is like air, food, water, sleep, just like basic bodily needs. And then above that on the pyramid, so the pyramid gets taller as it goes up, so physiological is at the bottom, then is safety, so that's like security, maybe it's having a job, a home, for sure, resources, property to live on, your health, okay?
And then the next tier up is love and belonging, which is like friendship, family, a sexual partner, things like that. And then you go up a period one more rung and you get to esteem, which he explains is like confidence, achievement, respective others, feeling good about yourself. And then at the very top of the pyramid is self actualization, which is like spirituality, creativity, autonomy I would put at the top.
And so the idea is you can't transcend up the pyramid, right? You can't self actualize if you don't have your physiological needs met or your safety needs met, which makes sense. If you think about it, right, like if you have your physiological needs met and your safety needs met, that's great. But if you don't have love and belonging, like it's going to be hard to pursue like a creative work and like, especially what we do as coaches and creators and solopreneurs where it's like, we're trying to give back to humanity. We're trying to make an impact in the world and build a business out of that.
It's hard to access the creativity and the alignment required if you're struggling with your family or if you don't have a home. And so it makes sense. I've had that in my awareness for a long time. Like I said, back when I was in college, that framework really resonated with me because I was always interested in the self actualization piece, like what would it take for me to self actualize?
That being said, now what I do is helping personal brands and creators and coaches build their business from a spiritual lens, a conscious lens for sure. And so when I started to play with these ideas together, this intersection of ideas, I was like, this makes sense.
I like to think of, you know, building a personal brand like digitizing your consciousness. So when you build a personal brand, you share your ideas, your frameworks, your stories, your epiphanies, your insights online in a digital format. Whether that's like content on social media or this podcast, in a blog, on YouTube, like it doesn't really matter where, which channel, the idea is, is you are sharing what you have found helpful in your life or for your clients and you're sharing it, in the hopes that it helps other people self actualize.
And so what's interesting about a personal brand is that you self actualize or at least, you get on the process of self actualizing as you help others in their pursuit of more. It's kind of fun to think about that you have, as a human, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs makes sense, right?
Physiological, safety, love and connection, or love and belonging, esteem, self actualization. But I like to think, how does this apply to business? And so I created, like, my own little framework for like the self actualization of personal brands. What would that be like? So again, imagine a pyramid, if you want to see the visuals, go ahead and go to my blog. I will link that up in the show notes, but it's www.itsambersmith.com/blog. And you can find this letter, which is the self actualization of personal brands, just like this episode, but you can see the pyramid that I'm talking about.
So at the bottom of the pyramid is like a basic understanding of value exchange and distribution, which is the basis of business, right? Business fundamentals. You trade value and you make money. And you distribute value in different ways. In online business it's like through knowledge or products, digital products.
Let's dive into that a little bit more. Like I said, this is the bottom of the pyramid. Value exchange and distribution is basically to sell something to someone at a profit. And like I said, that's the basics of business in general, but I tend to see so much overlap in the one person business or the creative business or the coaching industry, however you want to think of that.
So the big idea is to figure out how to add value to someone's life and get paid for it. And this is where personal brands, and my experience, the personal brands that I work with, the coaches, the creators, the designers have gone on their own journey and they have experienced growth in an area of their life.
And now they want to turn around and help the people on that path as well for a lot of people. And so you develop specific knowledge or skills and then you pass it down to other people. I love how Russell Brunson teaches us this is like you can only personally grow so much before the only way you can grow is contribution.
And that's kind of where most personal brands fall. The only way for you to keep growing is to contribute. Because businesses are about solving other people's problems, and getting paid for it, right? It's changing money for the problems to be solved. You have to learn the basics of business and this is phase one.
One person businesses use their own experiences and results as evidence that they can help someone else, right? Like if I got these results, I can turn around and help you. They had a vague idea of the value that they could exchange for money. I know that's how I started. I was like, I think I could help people be happy. I think I could help people have great relationships because I am happy and I have great relationships, through self development, through personal growth, through self education.
And so once you kind of know, okay, these are the basics of business, I want to trade as an example, coaching for money, or design work for money or whatever, right? Whatever skill and service you are offering for a lot of you guys, it's going to be coaching or a course. Some of you, it's going to be like designing a website or giving people, organizing their back end of business. I know I have, like VAs that follow me and things like that.
So whatever you are exchanging for value in the form of money, right? With your skills and knowledge. That's what you're up to in business. That's phase one. After the general idea, I don't think you have to be specific here, “I want to be a life coach” is enough for phase one.
Phase two is always hard to learn applied marketing and sales. And this is where a lot of people get stuck, to be really honest, like what I see online. A lot of people know what they'd like to do, but they don't know how to apply their knowledge in marketing and sales to actually get paid for what they do. Cause in phase one, that doesn't mean that you're making money. Phase two is where that starts to happen.
And so phase two is now we're moving up that triangle, right? Moving up the pyramid. Phase one it’s value exchange distributions. Phase two is applied marketing and sales. So after you the entrepreneur or the solopreneur, decides what you want to do in business, this is where you have to learn how.
This is where you learn how to get paid for what you do. That's marketing and sales. So the skill stack here in basic terms is like getting people's attention, articulating the value of what you do, and then persuading people to buy. That is in simple terms, right? It is a lot more nuanced and complicated, but like, that is what we're trying to do, right?
We're trying to add value. We're trying to speak about our value in a way that gets people interested. And then the people who are we get them to buy. We persuade them to buy. And I use the word persuade very intentionally. Manipulate people to buy is not what we're up to. But persuading, yes. Because we believe that when they work with us, or when they hire us, or when they pay us, their life will get better.
Which means we are persuading them to take action in favor of a better future that we think we can contribute to. Like I said, it is oversimplified to say, skill stack is getting people's attention, articulating the value of what you do, and persuading people to buy, but in general terms, that is what we're doing.
And so I recommend studying marketing. And one of the things that I've studied over time is like direct response marketing. So I tend to like hyper fixate on people. And one of the people that I hyper fixated on when I was learning marketing was Dan Kennedy. I read all of his no BS books. And I'm just going to point you in this direction.
So I started with his book, the best of no BS, which is like the general book, but then I really recommend either his book “Magnetic Marketing,” or his book “No BS Direct Response Marketing.” Both of those books helped give me principles, not that I do everything that he teaches, but the principles of marketing were really powerful for me to learn.
And here's the rub, is that, marketing and sales, mastery, is an infinite game. Right? I'm still learning about marketing, but I think direct response is a good first step, because you can learn why people buy and how to speak in a way that gets people to move. And then as you grow more successful, the mastery required to reach the next level of success increases.
And so as you get more mastery, as you grow your audience, as you start making more money, the skills continue to evolve and grow and your mastery of them never ends. And so this just becomes in the beginning, you're convincing one person to sign up with you on a consult call, or one person on your email has to sign up for a consult call, right?
Something along those lines. And then maybe you get fully booked. And now you have to convince or persuade someone to join a group program or to come to your masterclass or to like your post or to DM you with a question. And we learn how to persuade people to take action based on what they read or listen to that we created.
That's marketing and sales. So if you want to build a profitable and eventually self actualized personal brand, marketing and sales are non negotiable. And this is what's interesting, I was just talking to someone who felt like she was misled and I don't mean to bash anyone, I never want to bash anyone. But I think there's this myth, especially in the coaching world where there's a lot of mindset work and inner work, that if you don't have the results that you want, that you just need more mindset work.
And I strongly disagree with that. I think mindset and inner work, of course. States of being, potentiality. You know I believe that. I teach it. I believe it. But there's this whole other half of the equation, right? I fall very much in the middle of these two worlds where I believe in mindset and law of attraction and truly like potentiality and believing new things. And sometimes it's not because your belief is wrong or not enough, sometimes you just lack skills. And marketing and sales are two skills that I think are non negotiable to learn. As you develop your belief, grow your skillset in marketing and sales. And that's how you actually create a thriving business.
And it's not actually not even enough just to learn them, you have to apply them, right? You learn from a book or a course or a mentor, and then you apply what you learn and you experiment, keyword, experiment yourself to find what feels best and works best for you. And then the catch, you iterate endlessly.
And I know some people would be frustrated by that term “endlessly.” But truly, I don't think, especially for a personal brand, if you care about growth, if growth is a value, your brand is going to iterate. You're going to make pivots, you're going to change your messaging, you're going to tweak your offers a little bit. The ideas that you share, you will contradict yourself in the past and that is okay. Because truly constant never ending improvement and iteration is the path to mastery, even in business.
So, I think all of those things are really important. One, learn marketing and sales. I mentioned a resource that I really recommend, but there's other resources. I like “Dot Com Secrets” and “Expert Secrets” from Russell Brunson. I like “Copywriting Secrets” from Jim Edwards. All those books really helped me understand the very nitty gritty nature of marketing.
Of course, there's other ways to think about marketing aside from like the nitty gritty tactical stuff, but that was really helpful for me. And combination with all the more spiritual consciousness work that I do, the combination is what makes me, me. And why you're here probably is because I kind of hold both sides of the spectrum of building a business, the conscious side, spiritual side and the tactical strategic, like, more masculine type part of business. Both have served me deeply.
And so once you've figured out marketing and sales, and like I said, one of the important things that I wanna mention here is that this framework is inclusive. So each phase is included in the emerging phase. So we transcend a phase and include, so what that would be like is once you go to phase one and you enter phase two, you still do what you learned in phase one.
Once you leave phase two, you do phase one, phase two, and phase three. Right? So it's not like, well, I'm out of phase two, I don't need to learn marketing and sales anymore. Not true. Marketing and sales. And then the value distribution, like the basics of business, go all the way up. So you bring that skill and that knowledge with you.
Phase three is what I call creative distinction and community. And I resonate with this phase a lot because I like to be creative in business, as you know, I like to combine ideas. But I think there's this phase in business where you don't need, almost like breathing, like you don't need to learn marketing and sales because you've got enough of an understanding that things are working.
And for me, I started to emulate people who were successful and I learned marketing and sales from mentors and books and people like that. But one of the things that is cool is after you're making money, you have room for more creativity and what I like to think of as like digitizing your own consciousness, right?
Where you get to combine ideas, you get to create frameworks and think differently and experiment. And you develop your unique consciousness because you're spending time at the intersection of your curiosities. And I'm going to go over that in a future podcast, which I'm excited about. Because thought leadership becomes important here and you begin to attract your people.
In this phase, I've really noticed like all my clients really get me and I get them because we think similarly instead of just like random people paying you here and there, which was my experience in phase one and phase two. I loved the random people, but they weren't necessarily people that I deeply resonated with, even as a coach. I love them and I love supporting them. But I feel like right now I'm in a sweet spot in business where all my clients, I just like really enjoy, I really enjoy talking to them, I really enjoy what they're up to. I find their quote problems interesting and engaging, I like to think about their business and I love our conversations when we coach together and things like that.
And I really think I would attribute it to this phase of business that I got to, which is where I think there's a lot more creativity, but also the community, right? Like you've created people kind of like you who like thinking about things like you. And this is also where you start to develop like your own way of explaining concepts that make sense in your own language, not just from your mentors. I also think you'll know you're in this phase when you're getting renewals, referrals and people seeking you out instead of like you needing to seek them out. And I honestly think this is where business gets really fun. And then you get to transcend into the next phase. Like I said, this is inclusive.
So now when you get to phase four, you're living and breathing phase one, value distribution; phase two, marketing and sales; phase three, creative distinction and community. And now phase four, you get more autonomy and pioneering consciousness, which is where I resonate as like my emerging stage right now, the phase that I feel like I've just entered recently.
And in this phase, your business provides more than enough cash for your needs and wants. So a bigger picture begins to emerge. You don't have to work. You want to. You choose the structure of when and how you work. You choose who you work with. You get to experiment with different offers, pricing, and business models.
You also get to experiment with your content by combining new ideas, sharing them with your audience, and iterating as you go. I think that this is also where your personal brand becomes less about vanity metrics and more about spiritual meaning and elevating the collective consciousness. And like I said, I resonate at this phase now where I feel like I've just entered into this phase where I'm thinking very differently about my brand than I was a year ago, which is exciting.
I experienced a lot of autonomy. Right now I work two days a week. I have a lot of downtime. I'm exploring how to keep that downtime. Like I said in the last phase, like I genuinely love who I work with. My clients are stellar and incredible women doing incredible things in their home and in the business.
I just really love where I'm at. And what's interesting is because I feel like my business is taken care of, and I provide more than enough for myself and my family. I have this new vision, kind of, arising, where it's like, I want to serve the world. And always have, but I think I have more space to really contemplate what that could mean.
And like I said, it's like more of like a spiritual meaning. Because you get to pioneer consciousness to change the world. So it’s like you have truly like unique ideas. Not that you're creating like original, never ever before heard, like it's not like anything I share is like totally original, but it is unique because I'm combining ideas and the intersection is a new, I'm like birthing a different way of thinking about solving problems, which is pioneering consciousness.
And this is why I think personal brands are going to change the world, is because the more we do this, the more we elevate the collective. And so I think it's really cool to be a part of this movement. When we think about the future of the economy, I think there will be more creators, more coaches, more people contributing to the digital economy in the future than there are right now.
And so it's cool to be on the, kind of the leading edge of what that looks like. I feel like I'm at the beginning of this phase. I don't think I've mastered this phase. But when I see people who are a few rungs up the ladder for me, where they are moving towards brand actualization. They're the kinds of people that like when they push post on their Instagram, or they publish a podcast episode, or they write an email; the minds who interpret and absorb their information, like elevate. These kinds of people are shared, research and accepted by others as good, true, or beautiful. And it's just really powerful.
For me, I've experienced it as a really fun phase. I love researching and studying. I feel like I'm really understanding concepts at a deep level. And I'm excited to share that with you like this episode, because it's fun. And I can't imagine doing anything else truly, like life's purpose is a big deal. And so now we get to move on to phase five, which like I said, I don't think I'm at phase five. But in theory a brand would actualize. Brand actualization.
And this is where we see true leaders and history makers emerge. People who changed the course of human evolution, people that immediately came to mind was like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Other people more like me, right? Like in the self development world or coaching world, I thought of people like Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, Adam Grant, or Byron Katie, people who are like writing books that are changing the way people think about themselves, about relationships, about love, about peace in our time, those kinds of people. And so they publish ideas and the collective consciousness changes. Those kinds of people.
Obviously, like I said, I'm not at this level and I don't even necessarily want like a business model like Tony Robbins or like, obviously like Elon Musk, because we're talking about the digital economy. But in general, I do think the state of mind and the impact they have is what remains compelling to me. It just paints a picture of what's possible when you take your personal brand to that highest level. And so the question becomes how.
Okay, I've laid out these five phases of business in personal brand self actualization. What is that? What do I do now? So I created this like list or this concept called the one person business mastery stack. And like I said, if you go to the blog, you can actually see the visual representation of this or my Instagram.
And the stack includes online business, your craft, like writing, coaching, speaking, animation, design, whatever. Self management, your beliefs, states of being and performance. Emotional intelligence, which I think has to do with how you interact with other people, like compassion, having boundaries, communicating. And then grit, which is like longevity, focus, and persistence.
I think of those skill areas, like the mastery stack, so self, craft, online business, emotional intelligence, and grit. If you have those five things and you're always developing them, there is no reason you will fail. If you're constantly evolving the way that, you know, how you believe, and what you believe in, and your ways of being, and your performance.
If you're honing your craft, if you're developing skills in online business like writing and marketing, you have emotional intelligence, and then you develop grit, you are unstoppable. Truly. And so these are the infinite games. Simon Sinek has this idea of like the infinite game, where it's, the point of playing an infinite game is not to win. The point of playing an infinite game is to keep playing.
The example that I've heard that I love is marriage. When you get married, you don't want to win, you want to keep playing. The point is to stay married, right? Business is the same way. You don't necessarily want to win in business, you want to develop your business so that you can keep playing.
These are the five levers that make that happen. And so I don't think it's something you can do passively. I have very rarely heard of someone who successfully builds a personal brand and they did it like on accident. Or they did it kind of casually. The only people that I've heard of that, you know, really succeed as a personal brand are the people who intentionally built it, who elevated their consciousness and who stuck with it long enough to actually reap the reward.
And so the next idea that I shared was like the one person business. And I won't go too much in detail because it's like these four circles that kind of overlap. Think of like a Venn diagram, but with four circles, like I said, if you go to the blog, you can actually see this represented. But in the middle, I have one person business, and each of the circles is like this: intersection of your curiosities, high value skills, mastery, which is problems you can solve, and then people walking your path, and that is what makes a one person business.
And so there's infinite possibilities and potentialities here, right? Because no matter who you are, your business is going to look a little bit different, even if you're in the same quote, niche, as someone else, because it's you. You have a unique take on the world. You have unique stories. You have unique curiosity. You have unique skills. You have your own stories.
And so, no matter how saturated you think the market is, you're not trying to be like everyone else, you're trying to be like you. And that's a really powerful thing to remember about the one person business, is you don't have to compete with anyone.
There's a beautiful line in the book, “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace Waddles. He's like, do not compete for things that have already been created. Because his understanding, and resonate with this, is like on the creative plane, you don't need to compete. And that is what we're doing with one person business is we're creating, we're not competing.
It was helpful for me to remember that because I think it would be easy for me to be like a business coach for the online space, like there's so many of us. But I never really get caught up in that, cause it's like, I'm just going to create, I'm not going to compete. I don't even believe in competition, especially with this digital economy idea, like it's just an interesting concept that maybe we will get rid of competition. And instead introduce, you know, a different way of doing business where there's collaboration and true abundance where there is more than enough for everyone. That possibility actually exists with the online business, right?
With physical resources, even though there's abundance, people can kind of pretend that it's limited or they can kind of hoard or hide supplies. There's a lot of reasons that companies do that, but it basically helps them make more money. And in the online space, we don't have to do that.
And so that's just an interesting possibility for us as an online digital creator. I think when you understand the one person business, you can completely customize your business. I like to use the word bespoke where it's totally you, your passion, your interests, your desires, your workload, your clients, your workdays, your structure, your offers that make sense for you.
Like you can completely choose, which is very cool. And then as you learn the skills and you grow the audience and you master your craft, you make the world better. You'll make money. And interestingly, the whole point of this is like the self actualization piece, which is like you become the version of yourself you hope to become.
In Maslow's work, there's this line that's so good. He says, what a man can be, must be. And so it's like there will be suffering when you build a business for sure. There's a lot of things that you have to give up. There's new skills to learn. There's beliefs that you have to challenge. But there's also suffering and not building your business.
There's suffering in not going for self actualization. And so you just get to choose what path of suffering you want. I think in my experience, quote suffering for business is meaningful because I evolve as a result. Before I started my business, I mentally suffered. I don't know how much I've talked about this, but I definitely experienced depression after my first born daughter.
And, part of it was because I was not using my creative, intellectual, spiritual gifts. I didn't have a place to put or to channel my ideas and my desire and my ambition and my vision for a better life. And I think that's a natural part of being a human is like we want progress. And so what I love about the one person business model is like that is the place to channel your desire for progress and growth. And you get to make money doing it. Like, it really is the best of both worlds.
And so I think it's a game worth playing. And it really is a privilege to be able to play that game. Because, man, we're so lucky. Like, I always think about the miracle of the internet. I think about the eons of humankind that existed without the internet and they couldn't do what I do. I'm very, very grateful and that's why I always say like, be in the miracle because it is so cool to even have this chance.
So I hope that this episode was helpful. Like I said, this is something that I think you iterate on. I don't think it's something that you like solve for today. Definitely chew on these ideas. And if you're like me, you're just like devoted for the rest of your life to this kind of work where it's like self mastery and business. And you get to do both at the same time, which is the one person business model, which I love. Something that I said in the blog is like, what else would you rather be doing? I just think like, because it's so custom tailored to you.
Like I have a friend who works literally like five hours a week and she's not making a million dollars, but like, she's okay, she's happy because she's doing it on her terms. And so I think it's really useful to know what you want. I think it's useful to think about the five phases that we talked about today. Think about, do you want to self actualize your brand? And if you don't, that's okay; but like, why not? Because like I said, what else would you rather be doing? Combining principles of mastery and online business, like that is a worthy use of your time because it makes your life better. And then it makes everyone's life better because you showed up. So that is worth considering.
All right, you guys, let me know if you like this style of episode. I'd love to hear from you and I will see you in another episode next week. Talk to you soon. Bye.
