Michelle Knight is a mother, wife, world traveler and storyteller. She is the founder of Brandmerry.com where she supports entrepreneurs in branding themselves online, marketing their message and creating more income and impact. Michelle focuses on teaching the power of storytelling to create an authentic brand that allows them to show up as they are, build a loyal community and experience time, financial and location freedom as a result of their work. Michelle left her 9 to 5, retired her husband, built a multiple-6-figure-a-year business and became digital nomads all within 5 years of building her business. Michelle has been featured on CNBC, Entrepreneur, and Authority Magazine.

Michelle's website: www.brandmerry.com?utm_source=shownotes&utm_medium=bookyourdreamclients&utm_campaign=interview

Grab Michelle's free class: Build a Better Brand Method training - brandmerry.com/brandmasterclass

Episode Transcription:

Lindsay: Welcome back to The Book Your Dream Clients podcast. Today, we have Michelle Knight with us and we're talking about branding. And it's probably not what you're thinking. we're not chatting about colors, fonts, all the pretty things… what we're talking about is really important. So sit back, relax and enjoy.

Michelle, welcome to The Book Your Dream Clients podcast. I'm so excited you're with us today. 

Michelle: [00:00:36] Thank you for having me. I'm excited to kick off our Saturday together.

Lindsay: [00:00:39] I know! I love interviews on Saturday mornings because it is a great way to kick off the weekend. I would love for you to share all about you, how you got started. Just let us know all about Michelle. 

Michelle: [00:00:50] Yeah so I'll give you the short version - I feel like I could probably write a book as we all can. So yes. My name is Michelle Knight as we've chatted about. Today I'm the founder and CEO of brandmerry.com. But that five years ago is when I really kind of started my adventure and I originally started just diving head first into the coaching industry.

So I had just had my son in December of 2015. And in about January, I was thinking about going back to work, which was always the intention. I actually really loved my job. Which I think not a lot of people talk about, I know you did an episode on, you know, the ditching the nine to five. So I wanted to go back to my job, but I was feeling this pull to do something different, to stay home with him, to, you know, explore the possibility of having my own business.

And I looked at my husband and I said, I don't think I want to go back to work. And that basically catapulted everything. I had discovered the world of coaching through a former classmate at a university. And so I started diving into this world and you can probably relate, but once you open up that portal, it's like, oh my gosh, the possibilities are endless.

And we had always wanted to travel. We just had all those desires that, you know, our regular lifestyle that we grew up believing was you know what we should do - didn't always work for us. So I spent about eight months working my nine to five and trying to figure out what the heck I was doing online. I failed miserably, but I'm glad that I did because I learned a lot in that process about branding and attracting your ideal customer. And about September of 2016. I was going to leave my nine to five - this is already happening and I hadn't signed a client, and I shifted so much in my business to brand storytelling, to just showing up as who I really was not trying to be anyone different. And my audience really started responding and I started signing clients.

And within a year I had hit six figures and I've just continued to scale and grow to the point where we sold our house and I retired my husband and we traveled full-time in an RV and we're gearing up to go to Greece. And so taking that leap of faith and, and specifically brand storytelling, which I know we're going to talk about today has really kind of led me to create.

That life that I imagined sitting on the couch with my newborn and it just blows my mind every day. 

Lindsay: [00:03:17] Oh my gosh. Yes. It's funny how those babies can really get us thinking about what we really, really want. Right? We feel like we were living someone else's plan and then once the babies come, we're like, wait a minute. I don't know if this was mine or not, so I want to make it mine. So I love that you just dove in. You dove in fully and it's working out so well. Tell us about brand storytelling. I don't think a lot of us know what that is.

Michelle: [00:03:39] So we think about branding in general, we typically are thinking about the aesthetics or what our brand looks like.

And one of the things that I learned in my first year is that we really should focus our energy on is how our brand makes people feel. And so emotional branding or branding, the new way of defining branding is about creating that overall experience. And I often say that branding, if you think about your business branding is the heart, right?

It's the beating heart of your business without it. Without it, well your business kind of sucks. So you, you really are always focused on creating an overall experience and that can be what people see, what they hear, the customer interactions, all of those different elements. And one of the pieces of that experience and what can really elevate the connection with your ideal customer is brand storytelling.

So we know that storytelling is one of the most powerful marketing tools out there. Storytelling is a way to connect with your audience on a deeper level. And we know that through brand storytelling, you can improve brand affinity, which is the likelihood that you know, someone's going to keep coming back.

Right? They feel that connection to you. Even if they don't need your service or your product at this moment, they're not going anywhere because they're connected to your values, to your mission, to the person or the people behind the brand. And when we're talking about coaching specifically, you know, I always say this -  you're selling yourself, right?

There are so many people in business in general, but especially in coaching who do something incredibly similar to what you're doing. So, and talking about things incredibly similar to what you're talking about, right? We all know how to build an email list, right? We all talk about how to niche down. So what's really differentiating you from others?

It comes down to who you are as a person. And that's how brand storytelling really plays a role because it allows you to share, this is who I am. Or you can share more about your ideal customer and you can build that connection. 

Lindsay: [00:05:41] I love that. And I think it's something that is greatly missed, especially for people who are just starting or maybe a couple of years in, because we were trying to be like somebody else.

And we feel like if it works for her, it's got to work for me, right? And you try to do all the things I have that in my webinar. I have a funny photo of this girl dressed exactly like the other girl and the other one's looking really awkward. Because I think that's what we think we should do. And it’s not. I had such a hard time too when I first started, I didn't want to share with anyone that I worked a nine to five, that I was raising kids because I saw all the entrepreneurs online with their laptop beach lifestyle. 

And I thought that's what they wanted. And I thought, I don't really want that. And so I don't know if, if I share that I don't want that, if that will bring in people. So I just thought I'd, I'll just kind of blend in and stay beige. And I always say when I finally told people that I work a nine to five too, and I do this, I homeschool my kids...

...I have three. Then people started to match up to that, like, oh, I do the same thing. Why are people so afraid to share who they are?

Michelle: [00:06:46 Well, I think, I think when you're starting out, you don't know what you're doing. Right? So especially when it comes to branding. I did the same thing. My first website, if you looked at that today, you'd have no idea that it was a product of my brand.

No idea. It didn't look anything like what I do today, you know? And so what I think when we're starting out, we don't really know what we're doing. And so we gravitate towards what we view as successful... so, you know, you mentioned the laptops on the beach. For me, it was like the pictures in front of the Eiffel tower.

That was very big when I first started in the industry. And I was like, I don't know, I know this is of no interest to me. And so we start to kind of change who we are. And I don't think this is just with branding. It's just with anything like, you know, in life, this is just a normal thing that we do as individuals where we kind of mold to what looks like to be the most popular or what looks like to be, you know, the thing that's working.

But, you know, we know that by blending in, or being beige, as you described, which I love, you're not going to make any money online. Right? If we just sound and look like everyone else, which is the easiest path, I'm not going to lie. It's very easy to copy and paste. It's very easy to take templates. If you do that, then you're not really branding yourself.

Right? Storytelling. Figuring out what you want to share, getting over the fear of showing up and sharing those things is incredibly difficult when you're first starting out. But I promise you, you get better at it and it becomes easier. And one of the things that I kind of told myself in the beginning was that someone somewhere needs to hear my message.

Right? And so when I really shift my thinking to it, not just being about me showing up and talking about me and the fact that I was showing up to find my people, like you said, like people started coming out and saying, oh my gosh, I work a nine to five too. Oh my gosh. I, you know, I've got a kid. And when I share those real truths through my storytelling as well, that is the connection piece.

And that's what people really, really want to hear. So if you really struggle with like, what do I share about myself? Is it important? Always think of your ideal customer. And that's why ideal customer work is like a non-negotiable as a new business owner or just doing it all the time. Actually, I do it like every 90 days. 

Lindsay: [00:09:06] It does evolve, doesn't it? 

I think it's a really important to note that no one is boring either. I think that was one of the things that I struggled with. Well, I live in North Dakota. I live in a small town. I had, you know, I'm the most boring person ever. And so I thought, why would anyone ever want to have a sneak peek at what I do?

That's what I loved when the Instagram stories came around, because you could share those little snippets of your daily life as much as you would. Like what are some baby steps people can take to get comfortable with sharing their story?

Michelle: [00:09:34] stories. Well, I think the first thing that you have to realize is that people relate to relatable things.

So I get this question a lot because I have a pretty crazy story, right? Like if you, you can read all about it on my website, we won't go into all the details, but you know, I've had a loss of loved ones in my life. I had a, you know, difficult postpartum experience. I retired my husband and moved into an RV.

Right? Like, you know, it's not super relatable to every person. I would say that some of those things are maybe aspirational, right? But when I am showing up and sharing things online, though the things that get the highest engagement, the most comments, the sales, are the everyday situations. I shared a post on Instagram not that long ago that talked about how I didn't hit my goal for my launch.

You know, engagement galore. Cause they're like, thank goodness someone is talking about this. So we have to remember before all of this starts that, you know, it's those small micro things that happen in our day to day that are the most relatable. So don't feel like in your marketing, you have to have this crazy story.

And that's the only thing that you share. Think about the everyday situations. So some of my top suggestions are obviously number one, know your ideal customer. We think about brand storytelling as me showing up and sharing my story. But it's really not about you because you're trying to make money.

So, you know, you're not just writing a book, you're showing up, you're sharing a story to move your customer through the buying process, to the sale. And so. It has to be about them. And what I mean by it has to be about them, it means it has to provide them value. So getting clear on who that person is, allows you to reverse engineer and say, oh, this is a story that I could share that my audience could relate to.

Or this is something that happened to me that I think my audience would find hilarious. Or this is something they need to know. And that allows you to really, again, I think the hardest part about brand storytelling is you're all in your head. Like, oh my God, everyone's going to judge me. And it's not about that.

It removes that stress from the equation. It’s just about showing up and building trust. So that's a big one for me. The other one is I have a tool called a story bank. It's not fancy at all. It's like two columns, but people always ask me like, how do you keep track of stories? How do you come up with them?

And for me, the thing that I've learned and taught my clients is it's all about just the awareness piece first. Once you start paying attention to the little micro stories that you can share, you're not gonna be able to stop yourself. And so one of the ways to get started is to just create some sort of Google doc, or you can write it in a notebook.

I don't really care where you put it, and you just start writing down stories and moments in time as they start happening in your day to day. So if you're at the grocery store, something happens, you write it down. Kid does something crazy and you're like, oh my gosh, that's great. And you're like, write it down.

Right? And then you go and you connect it to the value piece. Right? Okay. How is this valuable to my audience? Get into the habit of this practice. So in the beginning you might have just like a Google sheet, you know, a Google doc with all these different ideas that you can plug into your content calendar, plug into your blog post ideas, emails, whatever.

Over time you're not going to need that sheet, right? Over time you're just going to be writing a blog post on the four tips for this, and it’s gonna be like a great story, pulling it out of the world. But getting into the practice and identifying those stories, I think is one of the hardest parts. And then I'd say when you're crafting the story, you know, there are four C’s.

I like to call them the four C’s to focus on. Number one is that the story has to have a character. So there are a lot of elements of traditional storytelling that we get to pull into our marketing which is fun because we don't have to reinvent the wheel. So every story has a character. Now this character can be you.

This character could be your ideal customer. This character could be your product or your service, your brand -  for telling the story about the kiddo, it could be about the kiddo. But you always want to have a central character or focus of the story. Number two, you want to have some sort of conflict or tension, you know, this is what makes great storytelling.

Nobody wants to read a story that's like this the whole entire time, we just close that book. So, you know, it doesn't have to be anything crazy. In the beginning of our interview I was sharing that I looked at my husband and said, I want to leave my nine to five. That is introducing conflict.

What is he going to say, oh my gosh, what ends up happening? And so it can be a sentence. It could be, you know, something that happens and something falls from the sky, you know? Some sort of suspended conflict or tension, then you want to offer some sort of conclusion. So we have to resolve that conflict.

It's a strategy that I teach often called open looping, where you can piece together emails like kind of like a series and make it really interesting. But you want to conclude whatever the tension piece was or people are going to lose it. So as consumers as audience members, we want to resolve, like we get, think about your favorite TV show, right? At the last, you know, two seconds they introduce something and you're like, oh my gosh, I have to wait until next week to figure out what this is, right?

That's essentially what you want to do. So you want to offer some sort of conclusion or resolve, and then because we're business owners, always a CTA. And now the CTA doesn't have to be buying my product. It can be a comment below. Send me a DM, give us a heart, share this, let me know, sign up for my webinar.

But those four pieces having those four C’s can really help you structure your storytelling for social media, email marketing, blogging, all those different pieces. 

Lindsay: [00:15:08] I love that. I think it's really great. And then it almost feels like this could be overwhelming to somebody who has no -  who hasn't done this at all.

So I think their first step is probably thinking I can really tweak my Instagram post to  make storytelling more prominent in my life. But then I go to my website and it is not bad at all. So then what, like, what's the next step? How can we make this simple for people to, to make it all come together?

So they don't jump from Instagram to the website and like, hey, this doesn't sound like anything like where they were before.

Michelle: [00:15:41] Yeah. So, you know, I think before you jump into even just starting to share stories, you have to do a little bit of that base branding work. And so this is something that I teach specifically, but I know not every branding program or something teaches it.

So no matter what you've done, you know, the first thing that you want to do is say alright let me audit. Let me look at my existing brand. Let me look at my existing website. And if you don't have those things great, just start here and, and say, you know, does this feel like me? And that's when I really had that moment of like, oh, this is not Michelle.

Who is this person, who made this website? If you go to your website, if you go to your Instagram bio and you’re like no one really could tell who I am from anything on here. You know, you need to back it up a bit. And so one of the first things that you want to do is figure out who the heck you are and like, well, how do you want to show up?

What do you want to share? And some of the things that I love to teach in the branding process, are what's the mission behind your brand, right? What is the core, big picture focus for having your business in the first place and the impact that you want to make? What are some of your brand values, right? How do you want to show up?

What's your authentic voice? What are some of the things, the quirks about you. Like one of the favorite things I love to do is like, ask your friends and family. I asked my husband all the time. I was like, yeah, what do you really love about me, you know? Like, what is it that makes me fun, you know?

And, and, and then really start to think about it like, is that showing up on social media or do I have this filter coming up? And, and, and then also really thinking about your past. So one of the first exercises I actually recommend people do is write their brand story first, because it's a great exercise. It's what you'll find on your homepage.

A snippet of it on your homepage. You'll find it on your about me page. It might be on the sidebar of your blog. You might have people use it to introduce you on a podcast. Right? So think about your brand story and craft that first as a really great exercise. And one of my favorite exercises for coaches specifically is to identify three transitions.

So from the beginning of your life to today, what are three moments in time where something shifted for you? Or you had to make a decision, or something happened to you. And then what lesson did you learn from that experience? And when you can identify those three pieces, then work on piecing them together to craft your brand story.

What has ultimately led you to doing the work that you're doing today? And like I mentioned, if you want to read this, cause I can't, you know, like read the whole thing on a podcast, you can go to my website. Boom, boom, boom. You can identify those three transitions very easily and you can kind of see it in progress.

So I recommend starting internally, before you just start posting things externally. That's going to give you a nice linear line. You know, like, oh, this is the brand story and I can start breaking this up and sharing this online and so on and so forth. So once you have that for the website specifically, what I recommend people do is write your about me as an actual story.

Share the story behind the brand. I am a big advocate for this because I have signed so many clients because of my about me page. I've had people come to me who said, oh, I was looking for a branding coach, right? Because I have pretty good SEO on my website.

And so I get a lot of Google traffic from people looking for a branding coach. And they'll say I was looking at a bunch of different branding coaches, and I decided to work with you because I love your story. Your story can sell for you. So don't underestimate the power of it, and definitely don't underestimate the power of an about me page.

So take that story that we just talked about crafting. Write that out on the about me page. From there, cherry pick a small piece of that out to put on the homepage of your website. So now you've got a story on your homepage. You've got storytelling on your full about me page. If you have a blog, you can put a little bio, you know, on the side.

And then the easiest thing that I find is transitioning to social media, as you mentioned, because you know, we already are thinking, okay, what am I going to share this week? Right? What are my five pillars? Every week make one day dedicated to you sharing a story about your journey. Just start there. That's a really easy way to start building connections.

Start practicing how you're sharing a story. Recognize when it comes really easy to you? Are there certain stories that you have a lot of resistance around, maybe those go back to the story bank and you come back to them a little bit later. I experienced that when I first started, I did not want to talk about my postpartum experience because I was still in it.

So I waited and I waited and I kept coming back to it. And when the time felt good, I started sharing it and it was just the next level connection piece with my audience. And so those are just really actionable ways to get started. And like I said, you're going to become obsessed with it as I did. And you'll start to say like, oh, I'm writing an email.

How can I incorporate storytelling in this? Let me expand on it a little bit. And start to just have that little voice in the back of your mind. That's like, all right, I created a piece of content. Is there some sort of story element in this content? And storytelling for social media obviously can be an entire post, but it can also be just one sentence.

So one that I share often as an example, is when I kind of fell in love with storytelling in the first place. And I was at a conference and I remember sitting in, you know, sitting in the audience, and the speaker said, you know, with brand storytelling, you are 22 times more likely to be memorable with your content. 

So your audience is more likely to actually remember you with brand storytelling. And so the story that I share, as I say, you know, I remember sitting in the audience at this conference and I had already been playing around with brand storytelling. And then I heard this stat and I shared this stat, that I dropped my pen and I was like, all right, that's it I'm hooked.

And then I go on to talk about the four elements of brand storytelling. So it's a very educational piece, but I have pulled people in with the element of storytelling and made that connection in just a single sentence.

Lindsay: [00:21:41] That's crazy, 22 times. That's amazing. Wow. And if you're feeling like, how can I stand out with my coaching business?

You got to, you got to tap into this. This is important. People come and sign me up as their coach because they saw that I was an introvert. Just, it doesn't have to be like sharing things that feel really uncomfortable for you. It can just be like Michelle said little snippets of who you are and that people can just grab onto, and then they feel comfortable with you.

It's really amazing once you just kind of release that a little bit. If I can do it, anybody can do it. So I actually, you, when clients first come to you, like you said, they find you on Google. Cause they're looking for a branding coach. They're thinking, my colors and my fonts and all of that right?

Michelle: [00:22:24] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Which is why it's my job to shift their thinking within like two seconds on the homepage. That's very challenging, but you know, that's that's a big part, I think about, you know, messaging in general and again, it goes back to the ideal customer work that we just talked about. What does your audience think that they need, and really marketing to what they think that they need, but delivering, you know, -  what is your audience think that they want, and delivering what they actually need. Right? 

Lindsay: [00:22:52] Yeah. You're not signing a client because they really like the shade of orange that you're using on your website.

It's not about the colors. I mean, yes you want your website to look pretty and you know, kind of on trend, but that's not why people are paying you every month to be in your corner.

Michelle: [00:23:06] No, it's not. It's like, I always tell people if you're thinking about like an ice cream sundae, it's the cherry, right? Like it's the last piece of the branding process. Not the first. 

Lindsay: [00:23:18] I think we always go to that cause that's what we think it is. And that's with everything. We're just talking with a student about, she has an Instagram course, right? We always want to come up with catchy titles. And I say, well, what do they want? And their words, what are they Googling?

And it makes that connection. They're Googling Brendan coach, how to grow my following. Those vanity simplified wants, those magic wand moments. That's who we need to speak to. So they can feel like, oh yeah, she understands what I'm going through.

Michelle: [00:23:46] Absolutely. I mean, from a marketing standpoint, that was like the best shift that I ever made in my business. I call them fluffy titles, right? With blogging specifically. Stopping fluffy and cute with my titles and just say exactly what people are doing. And now I've got blog posts that rank on page one, you know, my website ranks on page one. We just keep saying, it goes back to really knowing your ideal customer. Everything that you're going to do in your business: branding, Instagram marketing blog, and all that stuff... centers around how well you know your ideal customer.

Lindsay: [00:24:22] Yeah. It's not about investing $10,000 in getting really great SEO on your site. You have to know who that person is. If you don't know that it will be a complete waste of money and it is a waste of money just it'll come so easy to you it's going to feel wrong because this is way too easy. 

Michelle: [00:24:40] Yeah. And just so you all know, if you do invest in somebody to help you with your SEO, they still need you to tell them who your ideal customer is.

Like, they still don't know. So you might as well just do the work.

Lindsay: [00:24:50] you might as well. Like she said, don't be fluffy. Don't be cutesy with your titles. All of that stuff. Nobody's Googling that. They're not. You have to just keep it simple and relatable. Okay. Michelle, where can people find more about you?

How you can help them? Share a little bit about that. 

Michelle: [00:25:09] Yeah, absolutely. So my website is brandmerry.com. I also have a podcast called The Brandmerry Podcast that you can listen to where I share branding and marketing tips every week. And I share my travels and all of those fun things over on Instagram @brandmerrycoaching. 

So you can find me @michelleknightco over on Instagram and on the Brandmerry Blog, there are a lot of resources on brand storytelling. So if you want to dive into that further, I have an ultimate guide, blogs for days...so there are a lot of videos and blogs for you to kind of dissect all the things that we talked about today.

Lindsay: [00:25:44] Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. I'm sure everyone is going to head over and play with all this stuff you have. It's been great chatting with you. I love this perspective. I think it's really important to have out there. So thank you for being with us!

Michelle: [00:25:54] Thank you for having me.

Lindsay: [00:25:59] Before you go, I want to invite you to join my free Facebook group for coaches. Simply type ‘Dream Client Community.com’ in your browser and request access, and we will happily let you in. We have amazing coaches that are just like you who are starting and scaling their business and we would love to see you there.