okay welcome back to the daily mastermind George Wright III here with your daily dose of inspiration motivation and education and I'm super excited we got a great powerful powerful boss lady in the house Kalani it's good to have you here George thanks for having me I'm excited to be here yeah it's been a little while in the making and I want to do a quick intro here just so everybody can kind of get to know you. Kalani Michelle is a personal branding expert. She's got all kinds of different things going on but we're going to stay sort of on that topic today. She's got a master's degree in business and she's built a world-class personal branding agency that works with entrepreneurs, small business owners, businesses all the way up to $200 million a year. But she's an international speaker serial entrepreneur host mentor and today like i said we're going to talk specifically about her expertise in the area of personal branding strategy social media pr and so i'm i'm really excited to have you here and um and so thank you thank you for taking time because it is a little uh a little a little tough to get in your schedule get my schedule and yours connected is is like uh act of congress right so and we finally did i think this is about a year or two in the making It really is. It really is. I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. But if that gives you any indication of how amazing this interview is going to be, that's a good start. So Kalani, let's do this. If you would, can you just kind of give everyone listening some of your background? And I don't just mean with your company. Let's start out, you know, just let us know what kind of your background was before becoming this internationally acclaimed expert in branding. And then we'll talk just a minute about maybe what your pivotal point was breaking into this arena. So just give us a little bit of your background and story. Do you want more of the professional background or the personal background? I want a little bit of both. I want you to give me a little bit of, because I think it's important for people to understand that you didn't just like, you didn't just come out born like this amazing, powerful professional, right? So give us a little bit of your backstory, just so they understand where you came from personally as well. All right. Well, here we go. Better get some popcorn. okay so let's see um i kind of had a tough upbringing i um was born and raised in california and i just grew up my parents didn't have much money grew up in a trailer i we were the epitome of trailer trash i would say um and just a lot of challenges growing up from you know financial challenges to emotional challenges to um just even different levels of abuse if you will but i don't want i'm not trying to make it out like i was crazy abused or anything like that but just like emotional abuse or you know i was spanked but i think a lot of people in my generation we were spanked with belts oh yeah you kidding me man pretty good but no and that's good for you to mention this because i i know a little bit more about your background and we don't have to necessarily get in all to it now but i think it's important for people to understand that um you know it doesn't matter where you're coming from right no money no background personal tragedies a lot of that kind of stuff so i do appreciate you kind of mentioning this yeah uh and i think the the big things from my childhood i mean you know in addition to what i had mentioned my father passed away when i was 13. my mom had to go back to work she was a stay-at-home mom so i went to essentially not having a mom in the sense where she was so busy working and she was gone all the time that i was kind of left to raise myself and then 15 my mom got remarried 16. my mom's husband got uh he was intoxicated one night and i came home he threatened me and my best friend and so the next morning i um i moved out i called a christian family that i had known since i was five years old i grew up with all their girls and throughout you know elementary school and high school and called um called the mom and she came and picked me up the next day and i lived with them for the summer and they showed me what it felt like to be loved and so they gave me my first job. And then from there, I just kind of did the whole high school thing. And then I was determined to essentially change my circumstances and change my situation. I think when we go through tough periods in life, we can either choose to succumb to the challenges and not make a change, or we can choose to change our lives. And essentially, I knew as a teenager that the life that I wanted to live as an adult was not the one that I was raised living. And I also knew that if I wanted to change it, that no one else was going to give me a blueprint. They weren't going to come in and magically just change my life. So I worked my butt off. I went to a university when I was 18 and then I spent all four years. I worked about 35 to 55 hours per week at a restaurant. So essentially I would go to school Monday to Thursday, um, taking a full-time load an hour. I would drive to school an hour away. And then Thursday night, Saturday night, often a double shift on Saturday, often a double shift on Sunday, turn around, go back to school Monday. And so I did that for four years and, um, I graduated with no student loans and, um, it was just kind of the start of something beautiful. And actually while I was working on my undergrad, um, I was dating a boyfriend from 18 and 19 and a half he was killed in a car accident and then I met my ex-husband uh eight months later and then just life in my 20s got even better and better I think because I um you know probably between about 14 to 19 20 I I really was determined to changing my life and then even early into my 20s I did a lot of personal development to really shift my mindset and um and just kind of created a better life for myself. So personally, that's kind of how I got to where I am. That's crazy. Okay. So we have to unpack some of this for a second because I know you know I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. But I'm curious because so many people have so many different circumstances, right? What is it that gave you either the confidence or the motivation to think you could change your life? Being in the situation you were in where a lot of people, they feel like, you know, they don't have, you know, mentors or people to help them. They don't have like this environment that's motivating them to do things. Were you just kind of a self-motivator? Was it being with that family for a little while? What is it that gave you the motivation or at least the confidence that you could change your life rather than most people who get caught up in the fact that they, they're just never going to be able to have opportunities? Yeah. Oh, that's a good question. I wouldn't even say that I understood at the time that it was confidence, right? It was just the pain was so bad growing up. Like I never invited you just determined. Yeah. I never invited my best friends over. I was always embarrassed. People would make fun of me. Um, I, the, the pain was just so bad, whether it's from embarrassment, from losing my dad, from just having no resources that literally like I had no other option. Like the option of failure was not even an option to me. And so, you say that because, you know, you hear sometimes you hear, you know, everyone from Tony Robbins to a lot of thought leaders say, burn the boats, like you have no other option but to do this. But you know, sometimes people don't recognize it's not doesn't have to be a conscious decision to be able to burn the boats and have no other options. Sometimes you just have to recognize you don't have any other option. And you just got to go, right? I had no boats. You had nothing. I had to build the boats. You're either going out or you're being stuck, right? I get it. So that's crazy and that's interesting. And maybe what you're also saying, I wanted to kind of make a mental note of for everybody listening. You also said something very important and that is, you know, because myself growing up, like I was a little entrepreneur, I was kind of like selling stuff at school to the kids, like all kinds of stuff, right? But it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to identify that sometimes motion and just working hard builds upon each other. And it sounds like that's a little bit about what you learned as well. And that is that you just knew you had to make a difference and you started working and that kind of naturally started producing. Is that right? Yeah. Well, so when I was 17, I got a job at a fine dining restaurant. And so my, I think my first year working there, which was part of my senior year of high school or about a month of my senior year of high school, I think I made 22 grand as an 18, 17, 18 year old. The next year, I probably made close to 50 grand as a freshman year in college, which was a good amount back then. And so, hold on, what was your question again, George? no i just i think starting to work and not knowing what's going to happen you just started working and then you determine and it started to build on itself right i know now i know now where i was going with that see i don't have my whole together charge trying to distract you a little bit here yeah i only try no okay so at that restaurant though um there were a lot of what i considered at the time to be very wealthy people that would come in and they showed me that rich people aren't bad okay that money isn't bad that people with money actually do good things and they treat people well like i had literally um like patrons that would come in that offered to give me money for school because i treated them so well because i saw them so regularly because i would sit and talk to them and they acted as mentors in a sense to me. And they, I will say that was a pivotal point in my life. And I'm so blessed that I got that job because they showed me a different life that I had never seen firsthand before. That's huge. And I want to make just a note for everybody listening that it was your hustle that got you the job and got you around these people. But then you also, I really like what you said, being around the environment is what helped to, but also you recognized your money blueprint. A lot of people that are having a hard time and challenged, they start to justify why money is bad or why money doesn't produce results. And if you learn to shift that, then all of a sudden you can see more abundance. And so that's awesome. That's really, really cool. So, okay, let's shift now to what was there, and there might not have been a pivotal moment, but was there a point in time which shifted you from hustle and being more successful to kind of the career path that you took into personal branding and agency and a solo entrepreneur that just started to build and scale a company Was there a pivotal moment that kind of made you want to be in business for yourself or what happened what what took you into that arena so i will say probably the big two two big things here a not being challenged by the corporate world right because oftentimes we're limited by our job descriptions and when we are growth minded oftentimes we have all these other ideas of all these things that we want to do whether it's for ourselves or for the companies we work for the companies that we own and so that's one thing is um limitations but also with my ex um i he traveled so much that in order for us to be together when he was in the us and for me to be able to travel with him i needed something that was remote and this was 10 years ago and remote positions weren't as popular as they are now and so i i was i was kind of at this point where it's like i i'm bored with the corporate world i want to be challenged i want to create more and on the contrary i also want to be able to create something that i could travel with my ex and so between the two i started that's where i kind of started to do my own thing but again i didn't have a blueprint of what i was doing i literally was just learning and then implementing and creating and then doing it for myself and then learning more implementing creating into my what eventually became my personal brand that's literally full cycle that i've done is i just learned strategies tactics tools whatever it is i've um hired mentors joined masterminds read several books audiobooks all the things and i just i've taken that knowledge and i've implemented it into what i'm doing and then from there my personal brand has grown wow yeah there There's so much. If you're listening to this, you might have to rewind that a little bit with all the value she just dropped because success really does leave clues, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you found a way to overcome your limiting beliefs and most people are in a path in life and they don't ever question. That's obviously the best way to open up your beliefs is to start questioning. Are there more opportunities outside this corporate job that I'm in or this thing that I have? But you also said something that I really like and it's a pattern I found with many, many, many seven, eight, nine figure, you know, successful people that I've been around. And that is that ultimately, the opportunities that really have been the biggest were born out of necessity. And so what happens is really successful people, they make things become necessary, a must. And so you had to create something that was able to give you that virtual ability to work. And I think a lot of times people, if they can do that same thing and they can sort of add that necessity, great things are born out of it. And I think that's great to hear because I know, and we don't have time in this particular interview to talk about it, but you've had so many things born out of that necessity to be virtual from systems and everything else. And so I can attest from having known you that that has made a huge, huge difference. So I feel like, and I've known you for a little while now, but I feel like over the last few years, especially you've just exploded with your brand and your company and things like that. And so I'd love to just kind of delve a little bit into one of the things I guess I'll kind of mention is you're not just, you know, a branding expert that does that for companies. You're actually a great example. Like you've literally built a personal brand from scratch and put it out there and made some huge success with it. So if someone was thinking about a personal brand first of all help us understand why would someone want to have a personal brand like what's the the value other than the obvious people love to have attention and be famous and all that kind of stuff what's the what's the real benefit of people to have a personal brand and do you recommend all entrepreneurs have a personal brand oh good question okay so well let's start with what is a personal brand here's the thing is we each as individuals no no matter what your online presence is, if you have one, if you don't, we each have a personal brand. So it's not necessarily a matter of creating a personal brand because we each have one. It's a matter of how are we building it? Like, are we intentionally building it or are we not? So for example, let's say in terms of, you know, offline personal brand, if I go to an event and I meet individuals, they're going to have a perception of me based on how I presented myself and their interactions with me, right? That is part of my brand. That's part of my reputation. So let's take that same concept, okay, and take it to the online space. So I can just, let's even go back, let's say almost 20 years ago, okay, and let's talk about MySpace for a second. We were all just created, not we all, but there were a lot of us, and I don't, do you remember my space, George? Okay. So we were creating content. None of us really knew what we were doing. Oh, I'm walking my dog or, Oh, I'm drinking a smoothie. Right. It was just all these things that essentially don't matter in the grand scheme of life that we would post on social media. The thing is, is even when we were posting things like that, we were still creating a perception around us. People were still deciding if, whether they liked us, whether they didn't, whether they wanted to follow us and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. It goes on. So now though, the beauty of social media is that we have, we can easily interact with friends, with colleagues, with potential partners, um, with event hosts, with, um, podcast hosts, with book publishers and all sorts. And based on how we present ourselves online through content and how our profile looks, they will make a judgment if they want to work with us or not. And so the beauty of intentionally building a personal brand is that you can literally add additional streams of revenue. You can get book deals, you can get podcasts and interviews, you can build your personal brand to be bigger and bigger and bigger. And for what purpose? There's two main drivers here. One would be for income, right? And then the other one be for impact so that we can spread our message. And a lot of people that play in the space that we play in George, yes, the money's nice and we need the money to pay the bills and to keep the business running. That's great. But more importantly, it's because we have a message to share and we have people's lives that we want to impact and help change. And so that's the big thing about building a personal brand. And you asked a question of should all entrepreneurs build a personal brand? And I personally think so because when each of us are on social media, we don't necessarily, we can't really just hide behind the company anymore. I mean, there are some entrepreneurs that they don't have much of an online presence and they just build the company brand. That's great. But probably for 95% of entrepreneurs that play in our space they they are on social media and so it's important for them to be intentional about what they're creating because and especially when it comes to say uh politics and um gender identity issues and you know just all of these controversial things um we have to be cognizant of what we're putting out there because we will attract certain people and we'll also repel them and so if that's part of one's brand where they want to talk about those things fine. But for most people, they need a more intentional plan when it comes to content creation. Because a lot of individuals, and I'm sure George, you understand this, is they're like, I don't even know what to post on social media. Because they get so confused. And it's like, social media is a free marketing tool. How can we take advantage of it? Yeah. You know, what's crazy, and I don't know if you have actually branded this, but I'm going to kind of throw it out there for you because you've said it multiple times. And I caught it the very first time you said it, but for everybody listening, I want to really point this out as well. And one of the common themes and words you use is be intentional. And the reason I think I'm going to give you some backstop on that just for the people that are listening, they'll remember this, but the reason I really emphasize that, and I like that you said that is that, you know, in life, how we do anything is how we do everything. And I talk a lot about how being intentional with your mindset and with your life and with your daily rituals, Because if you're not intentional, it's going to happen anyway. You're still going to have a life, but it's going to be created by other people. You're still going to have a mindset, but it's going to be created by everything around you. Or you're still going to have a personal brand, whether you build it or not. So you may as well be intentional. And more importantly, if you adopt that philosophy personally of being intentional, then later on, when you do actually need it, and you may not right now, or you may right now, or later on when it will affect you one way or the other for your income or your impact, then you'll be glad you did. And so I love that you said be intentional, because I think that's even more important than the reason you do it. But I do like that you said for income or impact, because I think people are driven by both. And the bottom line is this, it's kind of like money. Money's not good or bad, but you can certainly do a whole lot more with it than without it. And I think the same goes for a personal brand, right? You can certainly do more impact and get more income with it than without it. But I really love that you said intentional because that's like a principle in life that people have got to have. And I love that that's kind of an automatic thing for you. You kind of said intentional like nine times when you were talking, but I think that's as important as why you do it. Because how you do anything is how you do everything. So I love that you said that. And I think if somebody was to say, all right, Kalani, I get it. Like I sort of get on social media now. Maybe I have a logo or a name or a personal brand, but maybe I don't. I don't know. But whether I'm in the business world at all, I grasp that I need one. So where do I start? Or if I'm already doing something, what can I do to make sure I'm going the right direction? So where do I go and where do I start with a personal brand? What's the most important thing? Thanks. Okay. All right. You ready for this? So we have building of a brand itself. Okay. And this is, this could be a company brand, product brand, personal brand. You have, you essentially have to build the brand first. And that's the positioning, the messaging, the design, and the development. And then you have actually growing it or marketing it, which there's a whole, there's a whole lot of different channels that one could use, right? So first you going to have your high level strategy and then you could do things from content marketing to website seo to email marketing to you know hosting events essentially to being interviewed on podcasts to writing a book all of these are different marketing essentially marketing channels so a lot of people what they do is they start off just on the social media side and they just start creating content well that's great but what what's the end goal and so for me i'm i'm all about hey let's put put a strategy in place. So rather than talking about building or marketing one's brand and content, social media content falls into that, okay, I'm going to go back a step to building the brand itself. So where we will start with building the brand is we look at like the position and the messaging and the things that play into that are like one's personal story is what, how does your story relate to your target market and who you're trying to work with because oftentimes where the intersection is of them working with you as a personal brand or following you and not is how much they feel like they can relate to you. And so that's through our stories, that's through things that we've been through. And so we look at the brand, we look at the brand story and we craft that in a way that relates to the target market. Okay. We also look at values. This is a huge one. And I will say just in life in general, George, And I'm sure you can agree with this. Most people don't even know what their own values are in life. And the thing is, is that we connect with humans. We connect with people based on shared values. You and I, George, connected on the value of growth, of personal development. And that's something that bonded us. And if we look at other relationships that we have in life, okay, you're connected to them for certain shared values. And so what we have, like, I don't know how many values are on the list that we have a couple hundred. And so what we do is we have the individual look on, check off the values to see based on their values, how can we help them show up that way online? So for example, if they use the word courageous, well, guess what color typically like will signify courageous. Like red is a great one for that. If they're significant, like if royalty or just nice things, or, you know, something that is a little bit higher scale, like purple oftentimes will signify that. And so we'll look at all these different colors and the emotions of colors, and we will attach colors to a brand based on their values. And not only that, like how they, how we want to design the actual brand, right? Do they, Does it, does it want to be fun and flirty and comical, which could be colorful or use, use oranges, or it could be, you know, something bold. And then we can look at reds. Um, and there, there's a whole lot of different colors. So if you're interested in color emotions, you can, you can even just search on Google as a, as a listener. So, um, so we'll look at those sorts of things. We'll also look at how do we want to position their personal brand in the marketplace compared to what other people are doing. Right. So we have to do some market research there, see what others are doing, see what their unique selling proposition is even if they're not selling anything, like look at like, what's that unique thing that makes that individual stand out. And then we'll look at messaging. So let's just say if it's a fun and flirty brand, well, guess what? You're probably not going to use a lot of polished language in the messaging. And so those are a couple of tricks there when it comes to the positioning and messaging, the design, same thing. It's how does that individual want to show up online. And then we design the brand around that. And then development would be like the website development, all that sort of stuff. So what I would challenge listeners to right now is if you don't really know what you're doing with your personal brand, or you don't even know what kind of content to create, what I would go back to is some of those things that I had talked about before is write out your brand story, write out how it relates to your audience or those that you're trying to attract. Look at how you want to be positioned in the marketplace. Look at your values. look at some of the emotions of colors, look at some different designs based on how you want to show up in the marketplace or how you want to show up online. And that will really help you to get a better idea of how to craft your brand before you start doing all these different marketing tactics like content, SEO, email marketing, and all that sort of stuff. I love that because I think a lot of people believe they have a brand and some do, and some don't really have a very strategic brand, but then they spend all their time trying to figure out how to position, where to go and what to do. And I think what you're saying by taking a couple of steps back and having a very strategic approach to your brand, and even whether or not you're building and selling products with your brand is not the point, but having that idea and specifics around your message, your values, that's why companies come up with a style guide and a voice guide because not only does having this strategy help you be more effective, but it actually makes your job a lot easier later on, right? I mean, when you are going to do a website or a product or whatever, you can go back to what the value, the brand, the colors, the fonts, the voice messaging, it just makes it so much easier. And so many people don't realize it's kind of the same story with life, right? If you actually have a life plan and you know what your goals and objectives and missions are, then making decisions along the way aren't as tough. If you don't have a plan, that's why so many people are like riding these waves up and down because they're saying yes to all these things and they should be saying no and everything else. So I love that. And I love those golden nuggets you threw in about color and voice and values because I do think that's where a lot of people go wrong. I think some people establish a brand. I've seen many companies or people establish brands that don't align with their values. and they struggle and they really struggle to constantly sell that brand because it doesn't align with them and other people don't resonate with it. So I think that's a great, great, great point. I also like how you mentioned the differentiation between building a strategy and then growing the brand. Because most people think of brand, building a personal brand, like going on social media and doing their thing, but they haven't done any of the the legwork ahead of time. Do you feel like that's a easy conversation with business owners when you explain it that way that they're like, oh, wow, even if they have a brand, they're like, we never really have thought about that kind of strategy. And having that strategy, does it make it so much more simple in the future to roll things out? So when it comes to say individuals, let's just say, okay, so when it comes to business owners, here's the thing is, um, you still have the company brand, the personal, your personal brand. It really just compliments your company brand. And a lot of times, sometimes you'll have founders that they're only interested in building the company, which is great. They don't necessarily want to be the face of it. They don't want to, they're not interested so much on the impact side of things and reaching more lives in terms of writing a book, launching a podcast, being interviewed on podcasts, public speaking, hosting events, and those sorts of things. And a lot of times for business owners, when they're really interested in making that impact, not just behind the company brand, that's where the personal brand is really important. Here's also what happens though, is you have business owners that will build a company brand and that's all they've built. And guess what? They want to exit the company. And they could have leveraged the whole time as something else. So you're saying, and I like this because a lot of people don't want to be in the spotlight. They think personal brand, they think, well, I got to be this personality and I got these things. You're saying people don't have to have a personal brand so that you can have impact and maybe create some asset of your own. You don't necessarily have to be in the spotlight. It doesn't have to revolve around you, but being conscious of it is a smart decision, it sounds like. Well, and it could even be something on a smaller scale in terms of, let's just say it's a, let's go back to like a nine to fiver or, you know, a corporate employee. Well, it's, if you don't necessarily have the desire to write a book, to, to make the impact on people outside of the company, it's not as pertinent to build a personal brand big. However, guess what? Let's just say it's a, I don't know, let's just say CFO, chief financial officer of a company and he's looking to move to another company. Well, guess what this other company, let's just, I don't know, let's call it alpha. So this new company alpha that he's trying to get hired with, guess what they're going to do? They're going to search on Google. Yes. They're going to look on Google for his name. They're going to look on social media. And the thing is, is that if they find things that aren't to their liking, and I'm not even talking necessarily talking about like party pictures or things like that could even be political things, things that are non-intentional. It could be very polarizing topics. Well, guess what? They may not hire that CFO because of that reason. So here's the thing is companies, as a leader within a company, I'm not even talking about just like high level CEO, right? Like you could be a leader as a manager. You could be a leader as a director. You could just be a leader as a janitor for that matter. The thing is, is that companies want to hire people that want more in life. They don't just want to hire someone that's going to complain all day, every day. They're, you know, they're just running this rat race. A lot of people do that in the corporate world, but if you can show, Hey, you post a little bit on LinkedIn and maybe LinkedIn, maybe LinkedIn is the only platform and your LinkedIn profile looks great. Guess what? The likelihood of you getting another job that you want is much higher because you, you have some sort of online presence. You have some sort of brand online that people can see. If I, let's just say I'm going to hire someone, um, or not, not to work within my company but let's just say i want to hire a third party agency to do some work for me and let's just say his name is john i'm going to say john's going to charge me ten thousand dollars a month for something what am i going to do with john's name before i hire him because i don't know much about it because he doesn't have much of an online presence i'm going to search on google i'm going to look on social i don't find much the question that i ask is why in 2022 or whatever year you know in 2020 is when someone is listening this who knows maybe someone's going to going to be listed in 2040, George. If someone doesn't have it, I'm like, well, why? What are they trying to hide? Right? Well, you know, and I think it's important to note that even if you're not looking for another job or whatever, this is a strategy that literally, I don't care who you are, if you're just a low level employee, it's building your own equity, your own brand equity is a smart hedge against anything. You don't know what's going to happen with the company you're with You don know what could happen later on You might be applying for college You might be trying to get a loan You might be trying to move into a place and they checking your references Building your own equity is a smart move regardless of what you're doing. And so I 100% agree with you there. And it's so important to note that even though a lot of people listening to this podcast are very driven, passionate entrepreneurs, you don't have to want to drive a public brand to build your brand equity. It could be just putting your values out there. It could be just being part of the world, right? Because you can't avoid the social media and Google anyway. So I love that. I really think that's a very, very wise thing for you to say. And I know that we're not going to have time on the podcast today to really get into a lot of growth strategies or marketing strategies. But let's say that someone wanted to kind of start to put their brand out there. What are some of the you know, a couple top things that you recommend to clients to really grow their brand? Like, what are some of the top things? Is it primarily social media? Social media is going to be a big one. Yeah. Because it's also, it's the easiest for someone to be able to execute. I'm not saying that they're necessarily going to be able to execute effectively on their own, but it's the most easiest in terms of say, implementing, you know, any SEO strategies, they're not going to know how to do that. where SEO, it's like you literally can, or not, sorry, with content, you can literally just post whatever you want on social and you have a post. So on the content side of things, I would say that there's, as an entrepreneur or someone that is demonstrating some of their expertise online, what I would say that's important to do is it's great to showcase the expertise part of things and teach people concepts. But on the contrary, it's also important for us to humanize our brands because people connect with us based on, again, shared values, different things that have happened throughout our lives and all that sort of stuff. So say, and just a case in point, if you're at dinner with someone and there's no commonalities, you're sitting next to someone, let's say you're at a group dinner and you're sitting next to someone and you can't find any common connection points, are you really going to want to get that person's phone number and continue the friendship after that? Probably not. But if you find a common connection point, it could be hiking, it could be surfing, it could be, I don't know, watching grandchildren, it literally could be anything. But by humanizing your brand and forming those connection points, it gives people an incentive to enter into your circle and want to stay. So when it comes to social media content, you want to post things that humanize your brand, we don't need to know that, you know, at nine o'clock, we don't need to know all the nitty gritty things. But merging expertise in business, like entrepreneurial related topics with like personal and human topics does a lot in terms of humanizing the brand. It's the same thing like say Elon Musk, would we rather follow Tesla or Elon Musk on social? Yeah, there's no question because of the personalization. And I think it's hard for people sometimes because they think they got to come up with all this content and information and be an expert. And I like that you said that because that's not true. I mean, connection is the goal. and if connection is the goal, putting your values or your everydays out there a little bit so people can connect is, and ironically, it's actually simpler for people to do that than it is to try to come up with some amazing strategy or training or things like this. But I think it's like speaking or anything else. People get up to the mic and they're like, I don't know what to say, you know, what am I going to do? And so I like that you said, just humanize it. I mean, the bottom line is we we've we all know how big reality tv is and and you don't have to be great at anything to be popular on reality tv so it's just putting yourself out there right well and it is and then if you're trying to sell something that's where it can get a little more complicated in terms of like understanding copywriting understanding sales persuasion language knowing how to sell something based on the benefits and not the features and we're not going to go deep into that But I mean, if you're not, if you are selling something and you're like, my posts just aren't converting or my content isn't converting, I would buy some copywriting books, maybe even a copywriting course. And I'm telling you, it will change the game. But again, if you're not to the point where you're trying to sell something, you're more just interested in building that brand, start posting on social media, things about your expertise in your business, maybe your entrepreneurial journey tips, tips about your area of expertise, lessons that you've learned, what you're working on behind the scenes, right? Those are all great ideas for kind of more of the expertise, business, entrepreneurial posts. And then on the personal, it could be, you know, it could be hobbies. It could be sharing about your family, if you're comfortable with that, about your partner. It could be about trips that you're taking. It could be about childhood memories, all sorts of different things on the personal side. Yeah, no, I love that. And it's so crazy. I even still to this day have to remind people there's this crazy thing called Google and you can actually learn anything you want. That's how I learned a podcast. You know, and we're 600 episodes later and hundreds of thousands of downloads and nobody taught me anything. I had to go on Google. And so you can do just about anything, but I love what you're saying. I think step one is, and honestly, even people that are building brands right now don't do this, but step one is just put your values out there, add the humanization to it, be personal. And then, you know, something that your company is really good at, you know, you can get strategic. And when you start talking conversions and ROI and monetization and revenue, well, then you can get more specific and you can get into copywriting and sales and what are the best images and what, but don't overthink it in the beginning. And even when you're going, quantity is better than quality sometimes from what I found in social. And I think you'd agree. It's like, just get out there and be relevant. If you're not noticed, you're not relevant. It doesn't matter how good it is that you're putting out there because nobody's hearing you. Nobody's seeing you, right? Well, and George, one big mistake that I made that I'll just point out is when I was first building my personal brand online. So, I mean, way back before 2005, but I'm going to say even more so in 2013, 2014. One big mistake that I made is I was trying to build a company as I was trying to learn logo design. I was trying to learn web development. I was trying to learn all these different skill sets and that come along the lines of building a brand. Here's the thing is I spent probably a couple of years putting more effort into areas that I really shouldn't have. I should have just written a check to go faster. So if you're listening to this right now, and you're building your personal brand is more of just a hobby and you want to design your own logo you want to design your own website fine but i'm telling you it's probably not going to look as good as if you hired a mid high level designer or agency that can really help you with those things because i i mean i i did it too i i spent way too much time trying to learn skill sets that now it's like i i have those skill sets but i don't even do those like i'm like yeah it's it's back to that, what are 20% of the activities that create 80% of the results? And it's not trying to master all those other little things. It's actually just getting out there. And that's stuff you don't need to have an extreme amount of talent for. And so I love what you said there. And that was going to be my other question is just what mistakes do most people make? And I think the mistakes you made are exactly what everyone else makes. They try to figure it all out instead of just getting out there. And what they don't realize is, and I've heard you say this before is, you know, if you don't just start putting it out there, you're never going to be relevant. It doesn't matter how good it is, how clean it is, how great looking it is, you'd be better getting out there. So is there any other big mistakes you see people making when it comes to building a personal brand that you would recommend people just identify? Or is it primarily just the lack of starting, the lack of moving and making the decision? It's the lack of starting, but a lot of times people don't start because they lack clarity. Well, why do they lack clarity because they don't have a strategy in place. So when building a personal brand, you can have, it doesn't have to be a crazy extensive strategy. It literally can adjust along the way. Right. I mean, it does. It, it, our personal, like I update my personal brand. Well, I don't mind to my team helps me probably every six months, maybe even once a quarter, because I evolve as an individual, my hobbies change, my interests change the, the way that we do business changes in a streamline even more each year we're in business. And so it, just understand that it's, you just have to have something out there for now, and it's going to change along the way. And that's just part of the process of owning any sort of brand. Is it, is it really just unfolds and evolves over time? Yeah. I love that. I mean, develop it over time, you know, just get it, get it going and develop over time. But, but beginning with a strategy is I can't recommend that even enough. And so I think that's huge. Awesome. Well, man, I wish we had a much more time because I wanted to really hit you with a lot of social media strategy, but you know, we're gonna have to do that another time. Kalani, where can people find you? Because I know you've got some amazing, cool free resources and everything else. Where's the best place for people to connect with you? So, good goodness. So Kalani Michelle, so C-A-L-O-N-I and then Michelle with two L's. So Kalani Michelle, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And then In terms of a free resource, I do have a personal brand blueprint. So that's kalanimichelle.com forward slash blueprint. And then that one has, it's essentially a 10 step blueprint to building your personal brand. So in a sense, it gives a higher level strategy. It's not customized per individual, but it gives a little bit of a higher level strategy for individuals. So they know a little bit more of what to focus on and in what order. I love that. I love that. No, I appreciate that as well. I highly recommend you guys go check that out. And you can follow her on Facebook, Instagram. And I tell you, this is definitely a very, very valuable strategy. This is something that everyone can use. And so for those of you listening, you can go back through this, but also check out on the website. She's got some cool resources there as well. But thank you so much for taking time. I think this has been extremely helpful and powerful. The information is something that's going to help people quite a bit. And we definitely have to have back to get into content management, social media strategy, and that whole ROI effect of monetization. So thanks for taking some time. I really appreciate you being here. You're welcome. Thanks for having me, George. This has been fun. Thanks. So listen, everybody, appreciate you being here. Go check out. We've got some new resources now at TheDailyMastermind.com, but that's our message for today. I hope you have an amazing day. Remember, it's never too late to start creating the life that you were meant to live. So get out there and do it. This is George Wright, and this has been The Daily Mastermind. Talk with with you soon.
